DRIVING THE RISK OUT OF MOBILE DEVICE USE pt1
A conversation with Michael Campbell and Steve Trevino heading into SOF Week 2024
Michael Campbell
Privoro Government Solutions
Steve Trevino
SOFtact Solutions (STS)
Taking the feedback that was shared with you at SOF Week 2023 after your big announcement with Samsung, what updates does Privoro have to share and showcase at SOF Week this year?
Michael Campbell
Leaving SOF Week last year, the big news was that Privoro, in strategic partnership with Samsung, introduced SafeCase CRBN X (Carbon X). The first ever true hardware-based, Zero Trust, and Comply-to-Connect solution for mobile devices ever announced. We could ‘camouflage the phone’, making the mobile device disappear, giving the ability to physically turn off the phone’s radios and sensors.
Since then, we’ve seen adoption by sensitive organizations who want to use commercial mobile devices in places where smartphones and tablets are banned due to the risk associated with cameras, microphones, and radios – think of this community as being strategic, operating in fixed facilities. And we’ve seen adoption by down range tactical forces including the special operations community, who are using mobile devices to support tactical missions.
The feedback from SOF Week last year was: “This mitigates a challenge we have with end user devices, or EUDs, both in headquarters and in the field. Can you make it smaller? Make it tougher? Make it even easier to use? Can you integrate with tactical systems?”
What’s new this year? We quickly adjusted our SafeCase and made a smaller, more ruggedized version, SafeCase ONX. SafeCase ONX is being tested in field use trials now by special operations forces and others in its new, smaller, more hardened version.
Coming up at SOF Week this year, we want to emphasize our vision of driving the risk out of using mobile devices by being the only enterprise solution for mobile capability built on hardware made in the USA. Our ONX solution – now smaller, easier to use, and more ruggedized – is the only true “Zero Trust” and “Comply-to-Connect” solution with enterprise management and secure cloud, SIEM-integrable management capabilities that gives commanders and operators hardware-level control over their risk.
This solution has been certified by the government at the FedRAMP Moderate Baseline for the back-end cloud management systems. You’ll have this hardened end user solution that can physically make a mobile device disappear, and you’ll have enterprise Comply-to-Connect and Zero Trust capabilities so that for different missions, different scenarios, change in mission, and just overall observation of the total deployed user base of this solution, you can have the complete enterprise management capability that is certified for use by a classified government organization that can be leveraged by special operations forces.
Steve Trevino
This time last year, the conflict in Ukraine was in its infancy. I believe we had a good understanding of the baseline requirements and needs of the force early on; however, we didn’t have a firm grasp on how a secure mobile solution would be integrated and used in the months and years to come. The technological advancements that Michael is referring to validate Privoro’s ability to match strategic solutions to ongoing and especially future conflicts. Privoro has done extremely well in receiving critical feedback and executing against projected expectations by providing capabilities that are now proving valuable to those in multiple operating environments. The ever-changing landscape in contested areas of conflict has exposed a greater need for secured mobile solutions and the team at Privoro has been one step ahead in providing these critical capabilities and driving the risk out of mobile device use.
I believe Privoro’s vision and strategic intuition, coupled with their technical approach, exhibits the forward thinking required to facilitate current and future solutions to solve problems that our forces are facing now and will face down the road. Well-planned and rapidly executed technical advancements will be paramount in enhancing security and lethality of the force in the future.
Why are these advances you are introducing relevant? Is this needed?
Michael Campbell
Great point Steve and thank you. Why are these advances we are introducing relevant? Is this needed?
I agree since last year, there’s been more public awareness in two major areas, use and risk.
First is that mobile end user devices, tablets and phones, are being used by combat forces for command and control, intelligence, logistics, et cetera. It’s no longer the era of the physically wired system. It’s the mobile, fast, wireless system that’s become the commercial platform of choice by combat forces forward.
But there’s a consequence to that, those devices are trackable and can be exploited. Smartphones and tablets are devices with radios, powerful radios, that cannot be turned off. Worse, they are designed to make you think they are turned off. Therein lies an exploitable risk.
The Russian Defense Ministry acknowledged 89 Russian soldiers were successfully targeted in an artillery strike and that their location was confirmed because of cell phone transmissions. The phones’ radios were transmitting and able to be geolocated, and an artillery strike was executed.
All militaries around the world, including US forces, are also facing this challenge and whether people wanted to acknowledge it a year ago or not, it is being acknowledged now. US Forces in training exercises have been shown to be trackable, not just by the smart phones they carry for personal use, but also by the smartphones carried for mission purposes and in mission scenarios. Again, those smartphones have radios.
Army Maj. Gen. Curtis Taylor held up a cell phone and said “this is going to be the thing that gets U.S. Soldiers killed in the next war.”
Conventional and special operations forces leverage smartphones for missions today, and without SafeCase ONX and our Zero Trust approach, they are vulnerable to being tracked. This risk extends to aviation assets where pilots are carrying a smartphone or a tablet with radios. Nation states are significantly better at exploiting these vulnerabilities than in past conflicts.
Leaders are forced to make difficult choices regarding the advantages versus the risks of leveraging technological solutions. The good news is we are driving out the risk of mobile device use. We are the first true Zero Trust and Comply-to-Connect option for smartphone/end user device use.
Steve Trevino
Thanks Michael and I couldn’t agree more. Privoro has done an outstanding job staying ahead of the requirements and providing a solution that also lends to greater security endeavors across the DOD. The Zero Trust efforts have been a significant lift, and we believe ONX, and other capabilities within the Privoro portfolio, will streamline execution and provide a true enterprise solution to the Zero Trust and mobility environments with the ability to securely monitor, manage and oversee devices across the network.
Privoro’s solution, again not only ahead of its time and meeting the requirements of today, provides a true enterprise solution that enables device management and security across the enterprise and battlefield.
Michael Campbell
The Zero Trust and Comply-to-Connect Enterprise fleet management aspects of the solution are a critical component to offer commanders and the end users on the ground flexibility. We are not pushing to take your smartphone away. We are empowering you to use it by driving out the risk.
The mobile device, be it a smartphone or tablet, is going to continue to be the technological tool of choice. We must prepare for this by providing both our senior leaders and the operators on the ground the ability to turn off, turn on, and set up capability that is monitored and trusted, with hardware made in the United States, hardened and approved for trusted cloud-based use.
We are committed to continuing to adapt quickly to the field by introducing a tactical, integrable, modular version of the ONX solution. This version can directly interface with tactical systems –chest mounted, arm mounted, leg mounted, vehicle mounted mobile end user device platforms– that are used by combat special operations and conventional military forces today.
Moving forward we will have both variants and more.
We’ll have SafeCase and ONX, a hardened version of making the phone disappear. That’s more of an office use case but hardened like a command post headquarters environment.
And then we’ll have a tactical modular version that makes the end user device disappear, but interfaces as a module into your wearable or mounted combat systems for end user devices. From a technological perspective, that’s the big change in one year, a big leap forward, on the end user device.
Let’s walk through this scenario:
As you prepare for war, the commander and the operator need to use the camera, the microphone, and the cell phone radios because they’re not in that theater. Our solution allows this, with hardware based Zero Trust and Comply-to-Connect.
Then you transition to open conflict or a higher threat environment where commanders and/or operators do not want to be tracked and they do not want the espionage risk for active missions. They can physically turn off the risk. Radios are off, cameras and microphones are off, but the devices are still fully usable. They can be connected via trusted communications sources, and the devices are allowed to be used. They can be used in that maneuver scenario without the risk and then you can adjust the control measures based on the threat.
Zero Trust architecture, alignment with Comply-to-Connect, and physical hardware control made in the USA are core parts of the total solution and that solution is ready to go. And you know what’s best about all of this?
It’s not a prototype. It’s ready for field use today.
