This is a good first step towards securing battlefield communications. As was mentioned, soldiers post about their movements, situations, etc. without regard to operational security. Hopefully, the secure access mechanisms will help prevent this. Does anyone know of a similar safeguard for the IPhone? I would think they are just as popular.
One main result of the COTS movement a few years back was that the military depended on leaky, hackable commercial software, as well as hardware, and then spent zillions trying to secure it. The problem has proliferated even more with solders' use of mobile devices. A ton of money has also been spent on attempts to design and/or retrofit secure embedded real-time OS. As Beth points out, remote wiping is not a new idea. OTOH, I'd assume that they've built in various military-specific secure access mechanisms.
I suspect this would also monitor what the users access, send or their contacts.
From what I've read, there were some missteps in the early days of the current war. Many would post messages on facebook and other places about what they were doing, where they were, etc, just as many young poeple do at home. But, in war, that info is more critical.
Security issues are the biggest problem for companies as they deal with the barrage of employee-owned mobile devices coming into the workplace and onto the corporate network. Obviously, the stakes are much higher when the phones are privvy to military applications or even just used in military environments. I'm wondering what this OS brings to the table, though, beyond any of the mobile device management (MDM) platforms that are widely available. Seems like capabilities like remote wiping of devices if they are lost or stolen is pretty commonplace. What would this offer beyond that?
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