Security Today: The Next Wave: External Hardware Is the Next Sidekick for Smartphone Security Isolation

Published by Mike Fong on February 1, 2019

Originally designed as consumer devices, smartphones have become vital elements of both our personal and professional lives. Unfortunately, as sources and repositories of our most sensitive data, smartphones have quickly become a primary attack surface for hackers, cybercriminals and foreign spies. According to recent media stories of American intelligence reports, even the President of the United States is not safe from mobile espionage.1 As a result, smartphone makers have implemented security isolation within both the operating system (OS) and hardware, partitioning the device’s apps and core processes as a means of limiting the potential damage caused by malware. Despite attempts to insulate critical data and functions from malicious outsiders, vulnerabilities at the heart of these mobile devices continue to chip away at an organization’s ability to protect its most important digital assets. The solution to this intractable problem may come from an unlikely source: external mobile hardware.