The New Black

The world is realizing more of the gadgetry from James Bond’s reality, and it’s about time. But we’re not talking about underwater jet packs or a BMW equipped with missiles. Secure phones that ensure secret-agent level privacy are in demand across consumer sectors. They’re even being made by military contractors. Boeing has unveiled a secure smartphone that marks a unique departure for the Chicago-based aerospace and defense company, best known for making jetliners. In order to accomplish defense and security missions, security and flexibility are key factors, and their smartphone is primarily aimed at government agencies and contractors who need to keep their data secure. Made in the United States after 36 months of development-stage, the Boeing Black Smartphone features a 4.3-inch qHD (540 x 960) pixels handset with dual SIM cards, to enable it to access multiple cell networks. The battery stops at 1590 mAh, and has Bluetooth v2.1 + EDR-enabled connectivity. It runs on Android OS and its key features include disk encryption designed to store sensitive information securely, hardware Root of Trust to ensure software authenticity, a Hardware Crypto Engine to protect stored and transmitted data, Embedded Secure Components to enable trusted operations, Trusted Platform Modules to provide secure key storage, Secure Boot to maintain device image integrity, and “hardware modularity” for multiple modularity capabilities. However, the central security feature of the Boeing Black is the PureSecure, an architectural foundation “built upon layers of trust from embedded hardware, operating system policy controls and compatibility with leading mobile-device management systems.” In addition to all these, the smartphone includes the ability to communicate via satellite transceivers and “discrete radio channels”, advanced location tracking and biometric sensors. But what takes this mobile device to another level is that on top of the call encryption...