Mocana Announces Mobile App Protection (MAP) for Android

Mocana, a company that focuses on smart device security, today announced a new software solution aimed at helping the enterprise get a handle on the explosion of mobile devices and apps on their networks. Mocana’s new Mobile App Protection, or MAP, is a revolutionary security solution that goes beyond sandboxing, SDKs, containers, and hypervisor technologies to enable admins to specify distinct security policies for each enterprise app on every device on their network. Mocana MAP even enables businesses to manage and secure mobile apps they create for the unmanaged consumer devices outside the enterprise network.

People interested in learning more about Mocana MAP can download a detailed product sheet here: www.mocana.com/map

Most smartphone apps are developed without any security on-board. That makes most apps unusable in an enterprise context, because companies cannot control the flow of sensitive company information into, out of and between mobile apps and the Internet. Mocana’s MAP is designed to solve that problem. MAP offers the enterprise comprehensive app security and almost unlimited granularity of control over apps, in-line with today’s complex organizational hierarchies and mobile app management requirements.

• MAP makes apps “self-defending”, to protect sensitive corporate data at-rest or in-transit, meter usage intelligently, and control access for compliance purposes.
• MAP “wraps” individual apps with whatever security policies are desired.
• MAP enables admins to setup multiple versions of the same app with different security policies for different users, devices and contexts.
• “Wrapping” apps with MAP – even in batches of thousands – is automated and takes just seconds on the MAP console. This can be done “offline” to conform to existing enterprise app staging procedures.
• MAP is completely transparent to end-users.

Enterprises worldwide are facing the “consumerization of IT” – increasingly, users are being allowed to “bring your own device” (BYOD) onto the enterprise network, in a bid to increase user satisfaction and drive higher productivity. Meanwhile, the mobile app universe is exploding, with hundreds of thousands of third party apps available to users, most coming without any built-in security controls or features. Finally, corporations around the world are rolling out their own enterprise app stores, and their own internal and external facing smartphone and tablet apps.

So far, security tools for managing smartphones on the enterprise network have been few, and blunt. Useful mobile app management solutions have been scarce. MDM (mobile device management) consoles can tell you which phones were active on the network, and perhaps what was installed on them, but do not enable security actions much more refined than provisioning, whitelisting/blacklisting, or the “nuclear option” of remote-lock-and-wipe. Hypervisor or virtual machine approaches can establish “company” and “personal” sandboxes on a phone, but often come with a significant performance hit, and cannot tailor security for individual apps, nor enable apps to defend themselves. That means hackers can compromise all the apps in a sandbox, once the sandbox is breached.

MAP can work within your existing mobile device management (MDM) console, so you don’t have to totally overhaul the way you interact with your devices. Once a smartphone app is developed, the admin loads a finished app binary (APK) into the MAP system, sets the desired app security policies, and MAP does the rest. You can even protect third-party apps, without access to source code. Newly wrapped apps are uploaded into your own enterprise appstore – or Mocana’s App Catalog -- for distribution to your users.

MAP is perfect for securing all kinds of consumer-facing or partner-facing apps, too. For example, consider a bank deploying a home-banking app in the Android marketplace for their consumer customers. That bank could use MAP to secure that app, even though the app is destined for a consumer device that isn’t actually managed by the bank’s own IT department.

With MAP, any enterprise mobile app can encrypt its data with FIPS 140-2 validated security – even if that app didn’t have any security built into it, originally. With MAP, you can put any app behind its own password-prompt. Using MAP, you can even prevent cutting-and-pasting (and data leakage) from any app you choose, under conditions you specify. These capabilities ensure that only the authorized user can access the Enterprise app, and prevents the loss of sensitive enterprise data should the device fall into the wrong hands. Data stealing malware is also thwarted, as it cannot gain access to the important data stored within its intended target.

Capabilities coming soon for MAP include: support for Apple iOS apps, limiting usage of apps to certain geographic locations (“geo-fencing”), easy establishment of multiple VPN tunnels between apps and the enterprise, timelocking and timeouts for any app, disabling certain apps when the user is driving, disabling offline use, setting expiry dates for apps or logins, backup and recovery of data on an app-by-app basis, and enabling of app telemetry for app service quality management.

Alan Snyder, CEO of BoxTone (www.boxtone.com) the leader in enterprise mobility management, said, “Mocana’s Mobile App Protection is exactly what our enterprise customers have been asking for, and we’re thrilled to be making it a part of the BoxTone full lifecycle Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) solution. The MAP technology is truly revolutionary with the highly advanced level of security and control necessary for security-critical mobile applications and data. When MAP is combined with BoxTone's real-time automated MDM policy and compliance engine, it delivers end-to-end application security and compliance with unified protection at all levels – device, application and data.”

Larry Littleton, Mobility Solutions Leader for CACI (www.caci.com) said, “Mocana’s Mobile App Protection (MAP) will enable CACI’s United States civilian government agencies, Department of Defense (DoD) and National Security mobility customers with a tailorable and Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) -based compliant solution. Mocana’s Mobile App Protection (MAP) will be an integral part in CACI’s mobile application Certification and Accreditation (C&A) solution for commercial and government customers. Mocana’s products complement CACI’s set of solutions and service offerings that provide end-to-end capability for the full lifecycle of mobility enablement, from development through sustainment.”

Rakesh Kushwaha, CTO and Founder of Mformation (www.mformation.com) the leading independent provider of advanced mobile device management (MDM) solutions, added “We haven’t been this excited about a new security technology in a long time. Mocana’s Mobile App Protection is an innovative and elegant approach. The solution puts the management of security of both mobile devices and applications for every user into the hands of the enterprise admin. The development and release of MAP is a key event for the advancement of the Internet of Things.”

Scott Snyder, president and chief strategy officer of Mobiquity (www.mobiquityinc.com) said, “We think Mocana M.A.P. will spark a revolution in the way enterprises think about mobile security. We are pleased to have established a partnership with Mocana where Mobiquity will leverage Mocana's M.A.P. to offer robust control and security as part of the enterprise class mobile applications we provide to clients. Mocana’s breakthrough solution will undoubtedly help enterprises accelerate the deployment of high-impact mobile applications that leverage sensitive corporate information and services.”

Mocana CEO Adrian Turner said, “The launch of our new Mobile App Protection offering marks the beginning of a new age for smart devices. Until now, the ‘consumerization of IT’ has meant that enterprises were largely unable to implement the security policies they needed to leverage the productivity increases promised by these devices. Today, because of MAP, the enterprise takes back control of the devices and apps on its networks –without interfering with usability.”

Other Mocana News

Recently Mocana announced a strategic investment from Intel Corporation (http://www.mocana.com/intel/). This follows an investment last year by Symantec, the world’s largest security company. On November 3rd, Mocana will host an industry event focusing on medical device security. Interested parties can request an invitation at http://amphionforum.com/medical11/

About Mocana

Mocana is developing the industry's only device-independent Smart Device Security Platform that secures all aspects of IP addressable devices as well as the information, applications and services that run on them. Mocana's solutions dramatically increase confidence, trust and compliance among OEMs, service providers and their customers. Every day, millions of people use products sold by over 180 companies that leverage Mocana's Device Security solutions, including Cisco, Honeywell, Dell, General Electric, General Dynamics, Avaya and Harris, among others. Mocana recently won Frost & Sullivan's Technology Innovation of the Year award for Device Security, and was named to the Red Herring Global 100 as one of the "top 100 privately-held technology companies in the world". In September 2011, the World Economic Forum in Geneva, Switzerland selected Mocana from a field of more than 800 nominees as one of its 25 “Technology Pioneers for 2012”.