Cellcrypt, a provider of secure mobile voice calling technologies, today launched Cellcrypt Enterprise Gateway, enabling business users secure calls to office landlines from mobile phones. The enterprise solution is targeted to executives traveling to hostile countries where phone interception is prevalent.
With Cellcrypt Enterprise Gateway, executives can securely access standard office telephony features from their mobile devices such as voicemail, conference calls and make outgoing calls to the public phone network.
Cellcrypt Enterprise Gateway is a software application that interfaces with office phone systems PBXs and provides encrypted voice calling to BlackBerry and Nokia mobile phones running Cellcrypt Mobile software. It also passes commands to and from PBXs via keypad tones (DTMF) and interactive commands (IVR) to enable secure remote access to existing PBX telephony features such as conference calling.
Executives are at risk of call interception by foreign states, competitors, journalists and kidnappers, especially when traveling abroad. In April 2010, a spy center was discovered in Latin America containing sophisticated cellular interception equipment used for spying on businesses, politicians and journalists. A 2005 report to U.S. Congress showed that far from being restricted to a few rogue nations, state sponsored interception is widespread and that 108 countries are actively engaged in collection efforts against U.S. technology assets.
Securing mobile calls can also help protect personal information from kidnappers in high-risk regions, such as South America. According to Time Magazine, in 2009 an estimated 9,000 kidnappings took place in Venezuela alone.
“The issue of phone interception is often thought to be restricted to government agencies but it has recently become clear that the equipment and software required is now available to the general public,” said Dr. Larry Ponemon, Chairman & Founder, Ponemon Institute. “The widespread availability of both the GSM encryption codebook and a complete base station software stack has brought mobile interception within reach of any graduate IT student with $2,000 of readily available equipment, substantially increasing the scale of the threat to the enterprise.”
Cellcrypt currently provides encrypted voice calls on BlackBerry and Nokia smartphones. The technology supports all major wireless networks and the encryption is compliant to FIPS 140-2 security standard, approved by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology.
“With the threat growing at an alarming rate, organizations need to adequately protect all types of calls ranging from board of director conference calls through to itinerary discussions with personal assistants,” said Simon Bransfield-Garth, CEO at Cellcrypt.