AirWatch Secure Content Locker clears DSD hurdle

AirWatch Secure Content Locker for iOS devices has achieved PROTECTED level security status as defined by the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD).

The software meets the requirements for PROTECTED material on mobile devices by using the iOS NSFileProtectionComplete functionality to ensure that files are stored in an encrypted format on disk and cannot be read from or written to while the device is locked or booting, plus the iOS TLS libraries to encrypt data in transit.

Earlier this year, ASD “found Apple iOS 7 data protection classes A and B to be suitable for downgrading the requirements for data at rest of PROTECTED information to that of UNCLASSIFIED.” 

Rob Roe, AirWatch managing director for Australia and New Zealand, told CSO that the process of meeting ASD requirements in Secure Content Locker started late last year. “The end users want easy tools” and this delivers, he said, as getting a document securely onto an iOS device with this software is a drag and drop operation.

Secure Content Locker integrates with a range of content repositories, and also supports personal content sharing. It enforces various policies, including user authentication, effective and expiration dates for content, geofencing, share limitations, and restrictions on offline viewing.

The software is already in use by certain government departments, Mr Roe said. AirWatch expects Secure Content Locker to be adopted by more Federal and State departments and agencies to allow the use of PROTECTED content on mobile devices.

He also told CSO that AirWatch provides a way of blocking PROTECTED emails from the native email client on mobile devices while allowing them to be read in the AirWatch Inbox app introduced at the beginning of this year.

Both these capabilities were developed to meet the needs of Australian governments, he said.

Mr Roe also mentioned AirWatch’s recent announcement of a ‘dynamic watermark’ feature to provide a degree of protection against taking a photograph of a screen displaying a secured document. While it cannot prevent a photo from being taken - it’s merely “a deterrent not to do anything silly,” he said - the resulting image will include the username and a timestamp, presumably using steganography (at least one member of the AirWatch developer team has experience in that technology).

Read more: Rival AirWatch pushed Citrix to chase Cloud capabilities in enterprise mobility

 

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Tags privacymobile devicesAppleDSDAirWatchSecure Content LockerRob Roe

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