It’s a few years for the reason that Blackberry was the company phone du jour. Touchscreen telephones and the ‘Bring your Own Device’ pattern put paid to all that. But the idea of devoted cell {hardware} for corporates and governments with above common safety considerations hasn’t completely handed into tech historical past.
Brazilian software program firm Sikur has been pushing the idea since 2015 when it launched a smartphone working a locked down/hardened model of Android which it branded GranitePhone. That was adopted up in 2018 with the eponymous SikurPhone.
Now at Mobile World Congress 2022 the agency is displaying off a new safety hardened and “licensed” Android handset — which has been given the considerably deceptive moniker of Sikur One. (But that’s advertising and marketing for you.)
It’s branding the gadget a “zero belief idea” — on account of a bundle of “Sikur engineer licensed” options that are touted to “improve defenses and encrypt confidential info at its supply”, because it places it.
Baked in safety features embody gadget encryption; a default block on putting in apps from third-party shops; and a arduous block on location companies — the latter, after all, being notoriously difficult to modify off on vanilla Android due to Google’s multilayered settings and rapacious urge for food for person information.
Sikur’s “Android Verified Boot” additionally purges built-in system apps to additional shrink the assault floor space and/or hold the gadget “light-weight and secure”, as its PR tells it.
And regardless of modifying out some commonplace software program, Sikur says the handset is “absolutely configured and able to use”, whereas additional claiming it has “the identical usability as a common gadget”. (Maybe that depends upon what precisely you need to use it for.)
Its construct additionally comes with a locked bootloader and Over The Air (OTA) patching for apps and the OS to make sure it’s at all times updated, i.e. moderately than leaving it as much as customers to recollect to push a guide replace with the danger of safety vulnerabilities in the intervening time.
Sikur additional touts a “password-less authentication token operate” — which it suggests may assist forestall phishing and malware assaults. Default community settings are additionally tweaked with safety in thoughts. (Plus you get Sikur’s secure VPN to protect connections to unsecured wi-fi.)
Remote lock & wipe can be on board, as you’d anticipate.
The gadget comes with Sikur Messenger because the default comms app — aka, the corporate’s end-to-end encrypted messaging app which is meant to face in because the secure company chat app (with assist for messaging, voice, video calls and so forth), and in addition for file storage and sharing, holding information in a secure personal cloud.
Albeit, this degree of secure comms is simply going to be out there inside the Sikur Messenger micro-network; so solely staff provisioned with a gadget working the software program will have the ability to take part. (Although the messenger app can be out there for commonplace Android, iOS and Windows, so doesn’t require the corporate’s cell {hardware} to entry.)
On the specs entrance, the Sikur One has a 6.5″ display, an octa core processor working Android 11, and a 4,000 mAh battery.
It’s a 4G (not 5G) gadget, with 4GB of RAM and 128GB of inner storage (an enlargement slot helps including as much as 512GB).
There’s additionally entrance and rear cameras, and assist for twin SIM.
Color choice: (Stealth) black, clearly.
“Ordinary gadgets are open and inclined to modified configurations and may comprise apps that may injury the system and introduce malware, opening doorways for information leakage and espionage. With Sikur One, even a connection remodeled public networks, equivalent to in airports or eating places, is protected,” stated Fabio Fischer, CEO of Sikur in a assertion.
The handset is a collaboration between Sikur and Brazilian electronics maker, Multilaser.
Pre-sales for the gadget — which Sikur is focusing on at “giant companies and authorities organizations”, aka entities who could also be involved each about safety and wider compliance with privateness laws like Europe’s GDPR and Brazil’s equal (LGPD), are beginning this week per a spokesman.
“Devices are promoting throughout Latin America, US, Europe and Middle East,” he additionally stated, including: “Brazil and the US are our greatest markets, thus far.”
Sikur informed us the corporate has bought round 35,000 handsets since 2015.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/03/sikur-one/
