The most secure smartphones

data brokers following you to every website you visit, and hackers everywhere, you cannot be too careful about the security of your smartphone.Just imagine the amount and kinds of sensitive personal information that you might have in your phone: passwords, contacts, access codes for various environments, debit and credit card numbers, bank account information, pictures, […]

data brokers following you to every website you visit, and hackers everywhere, you cannot be too careful about the security of your smartphone.
Just imagine the amount and kinds of sensitive personal information that you might have in your phone: passwords, contacts, access codes for various environments, debit and credit card numbers, bank account information, pictures, movies, and miscellaneous data. You obviously wouldn’t want some random folks to have access to this rich garden of personal data.
This article will be more meaningful to you if you already take a few, fairly basic, common sense, precautions to secure your phone. The basic precautions include requiring an 8-digit PIN code to access your phone, installing an anti-virus software, using a “find my phone” app to locate your phone if it is stolen, taping a note on the back of your phone with your contact information on it, backing up your phone contents into a drive on the cloud, not allowing yourself to be tricked into downloading malicious software or visiting phishing websites, and recording your phone’s unique identification (ID) number(s) in a safe place. (The ID numbers could be the IMEI (International Mobile Station Equipment Identity) or MEID (Mobile Equipment Identifier) number.) A useful tool to have is “Kill Switch,” which is available on the iPhone Operating System (iOS) version 7 and higher. The tool allows you to remotely disable or even destroy the contents of your phone, in case the phone is stolen.
With the basic steps in the foregoing, your concern can now shift to the security features of your phone. In its heydays, Blackberry was considered to be the most secure phone, but the company is virtually worthless now, so iPhone Operating System (iOS) and Android-driven smartphones are the leaders. The question then is: Which smartphones are more secure – iPhones or Androids? The iPhones are intrinsically more secure than Android phones, the reason being that the Android OS is an open source platform whereas the iOS is proprietary and tightly controlled by its owner (Apple). Being open, anyone, including hackers, can access the source codes that make up the Android OS, to gain understanding of the underlying architecture, thereby enhancing the development of all sorts of malware that infect your smartphone. On the other hand, iOS is proprietary and uses the so-called “sandbox” concept which prevents the replication of viruses inside the phone and hence the occurrence of denial of service attacks. There are no known operating system viruses for any of Apple’s products (iPhone, iPad, MacBook, and iMac desktop computers) as the OS uses advanced antivirus features which hackers have not been able to break so far. A more insidious problem for Android phones is the fact that anti-hacking codes for the OS can still be open-source and hence can be accessed and defeated!
The security features of iPhone also include strong encryption methods and data protection. To keep things simple and user-friendly, Apple enables most of the iPhone’s security features by default. The iPhone also ensures that all the apps you load onto your phone come from an approved source, with recovery mode and emergency restoration of defaults. Samsung Galaxy S4 (now S5) and Blackberry Z10 phones are considered to be the second and third most secure phones, respectively.
The Samsung Galaxy S4 features a “business companion” called Knox, which maintains high-level security standards and complies with the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) mobile OS guide for security requirements (SRG).
The U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) announced on 14 May 2014 that Galaxy S4s running Android’s 4.4 operating system and Samsung’s Knox security solution have been deemed secure enough to use DISA’s new mobile device management (MDM) system to tap into Defense Department non-classified data networks. The MDM enforces security policies by blocking or permitting certain functions on smartphones and tablets. It also detects malware, permits remote reconfiguration, and enables devices to be wiped clean remotely if they are lost or stolen.
On June 16, 2014, Aliya Sternstein wrote in Nextgov that the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) opened up bidding for a contract to supply the feds with a year’s worth (26,500 phones) of the latest Samsung Knox security software suited for Galaxy S5 smartphones. Samsung claims version 2.0 of Knox can better support encryption tools than the first iteration of the “container” software, which came out last year. The Samsung S5 is known for sporting a heart rate sensor, as well as fingerprint scanner for unlocking the phone and authorizing purchases. Knox 2.0 monitors in real-time for any unauthorized changes to the phone’s operating system, and provides a two-step login process that requires the user to enter a password and swipe a finger to access sensitive data. The “BlackBerry Balance” feature of BlackBerry Z10, the third most secure smartphone today, protects against data leakage, prevents unauthorized devices from accessing your business assets, and provides end-to-end encryption. The phone is fully compliant with U.S. government standards and regulated environments. For years, BlackBerry dominated the territory of secure mobile devices at the Defense Department. However, with dwindling business, DISA might be concerned about BlackBerry’s survivability, thereby allowing Apple, and now, Samsung, to come in as discussed above.
The bottom line in this article is that, with BlackBerry’s marginalized business, the iPhone Operating System has emerged as the most secure smartphone OS, followed by a Samsung-developed “container” (Knox) to Android. Meanwhile, the Apple and Samsung devices are only permitted to access unclassified U.S. Defense networks for now.