U.S. Military Hunts for Safe Smartphones for Soldiers
By SOMINI SENGUPTA JUNE 22, 2012
The military has long needed computers that are tough enough on the outside to withstand the rough and tumble of the battlefield. Now, with the proliferation of smartphones and tablets in the hands of soldiers, those devices also have to be strong on the inside. They are loaded with contacts, location information and all kinds of military-grade applications, so it can be deadly for a soldier to lose a mobile device or have its data leak out unwittingly.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, has now assigned Invincea, a company based in Fairfax, Va., to fortify Android-based phones and tablets so they are safe in soldiers' hands. The $21 million grant to the company is a window into how pervasive networked technologies have become in the military - and the market that has opened up to secure them.
Part of the problem, said Anup Ghosh, a professor at George Mason University and the founder of Invincea, is that soldiers often want to use their mobile devices to communicate with families back home, and to entertain themselves when they can. And so military applications sit side by side with games, social networking apps and other distractions.
The risks can be unexpected. Soldiers playing games on an Army base in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, can easily and unknowingly transmit the names of their friends. A piece of malware can penetrate the operating system and suck out location information.
At the same time, mobile devices are beginning to change the work and lives of soldiers as they have for everyone else, as the Department of Defense acknowledged in a strategy paper earlier this month.
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Maybe it's just me, but when I read this, I think "Wikileaks".
Bill Horne Moderator