San Francisco-based mobile and smart device security firm Mocana, today announced release of the latest version of its Mobile App Protection (MAP) solution which lets customers wrap fine-grained app-level DLP, VPN, and access & usage controls around individual mobile applications.
The latest version brings enhanced security and advanced authentication for Android devices, as well as remediation capabilities and greater flexibility in meeting enterprise application security requirements.
Mocana’s Mobile App Protection complements existing mobile device management (MDM) solutions that may be in place, but goes beyond app sandboxes, SDKs, containers, and hypervisor technologies that other mobile solutions typically utilize.
The announcement was made to coincide with the company’s Amphion Forum Event in San Francisco, a one-day conference focused on securing connected devices.
Due to the often limited security built into smartphone apps, most are unusable in an enterprise environment and are likely to violate security policies, as organizations can’t control what sensitive company information may be flowing in and out of the enterprise. Mocana has been helping enterprises address those issues since the first-generation of MAP was launched in October 2011. In April of this year added support for Apple iOS apps to MAP’s existing support for apps running on Android.
Once “wrapped” with Mocana’s MAP solution, the result is what what the company calls a “Self-Defending App” armed with data protection and IT control for enterprise apps. The solution works on both managed and unmanaged mobile devices and is essentially invisible to end-users.
New “app-wrapping” features provider by the latest version of Mocana MAP includes:
· Enhanced security for Android – Rooting (aka “jailbreak”) detection and per-application VPN support on Android (in addition to iOS).
· Enhanced authentication and remediation options – Extended and enhanced user authentication options through complex per-app passcodes, passcode expiration, failed authentication lock-out and help-desk assisted passcode reset. Addition of customizable end user acceptance agreements.
· Greater flexibility in establishing application security baselines – Allows IT to individualize security as needed for user groups and data sensitivity by enabling organizations to “toggle” true FIPS 140-2 encryption on or off.
· Secure data sharing between individually wrapped apps – Enables secured applications to pass data between themselves, fully encrypted, on the same handset.
· Time-based access control policies – Creates a time-limited access window to the application for employees or contractors.
“MAP offers market-critical security features to protect company information such as per-application VPN capabilities and FIPS 140-2 encryption both on iOS or Android,” the company explained in a statement. “While many alternative approaches require modification of the application source code, Mocana eliminates this risky and complicated step by securing mobile applications in seconds without access to source code.”
“The biggest obstacle to enterprise mobility is not device management, it’s applying enterprise grade application security in a timely manner to meet the business objectives of the organization,” said Mike Siegel, VP Products at Mocana. “MAP accelerates mobile app deployment by separating app security from app development, which simplifies operational complexities and addresses security in a scalable way. It’s simply not practical to expect app developers to meet the best-in-class or varying security policies of each enterprise.”
