Southern Cross Venture

News

Mocana Security Suite Release

Thursday, 23 October 2008

Mocana Delivers First Enterprise-Grade Security Suite to Android™ Developers. New Software Should Help Android Penetrate Security-Conscious Business And Consumer Markets. SAN FRANCISCO, CA – October 23, 2008 – Mocana, a software company that delivers comprehensive embedded security solutions for non-PC devices attached to the network, today announced the NanoPhone™ suite for the Android™ Mobile Platform, the most comprehensive open standards-based security suite for developers building to the Open Handset Alliance’s Android specifications.

Using NanoPhone, developers can quickly add much-needed firewall, VPN, and encryption features to Android handsets without compromising the performance, throughput or battery life of the platform. “We’re a big fan of open standards, and by opening Android to all developers, Google is really kick-starting innovation on the handset. We believe that with continued investment Android has the potential to become a truly disruptive mobile platform,” said Adrian Turner, CEO of Mocana. “We hope to encourage the adoption of Android by the enterprise and by security-conscious consumers by giving developers the critical security components they need to protect Android smartphones, their users and the information that resides on them.”

“Android has the opportunity to be a game changer with the backing of the mobile open source community,” said Chris Hazelton, Research Director of Mobile and Wireless at The 451 Group. “Mobile device security has not been a primary concern in the industry, but with the rapidly increasing number of smartphones in the market, which will soon include Android, these devices are starting to become an inviting target for attacks.”

Gartner estimates the global smartphone market will reach $200 billion by 2012 to encompass 65% of all cellular handsets. In a little less than a year, the iPhone has inspired a new generation of smartphone buyers – and it’s not just Apple who is benefitting from “the iPhone effect”. This past quarter Blackberry sales were up 126% - and RIM has nearly doubled their market share of the overall mobile market from Q2 2007. But these two players have very different approaches to the market. The iPhone has a tremendous “Wow!” factor, but its light on security features. Conversely, the Blackberry’s interface might not be as compelling as the iPhone, but it’s long been considered the gold standard for secure smartphones.

As a direct consequence RIM has dominated the enterprise market – where IT department dollars dictate security terms. “As it stands today, while iPhone’s growing fast, Blackberry is still the platform to beat, with 17 times more phones out there than Apple. So we started asking ourselves, ‘what if consumers – and enterprise users – weren’t forced to choose between security and usability?’ By providing NanoPhone to the community of Android developers, we believe that soon you’ll see Android phones in the marketplace with the “Wow!” factor of the iPhone coupled with the high security of a Blackberry,” said Kurt Stammberger, vice president of marketing at Mocana.

NanoPhone hopes to help increase Android’s addressable market by providing Android developers with the functionality to quickly and easily build-in these essential security components: Virtual Private Network (VPN) clients to secure data communications between the device and corporate network; Voice, video and data encryption (in transit and at rest) with FIPS-validated crypto; Comprehensive malware and virus protection with no false positives; A higher performance, more secure browser for ecommerce and online banking applications; Scalable and secure firmware updating and secure boot capabilities; Robust certificate handling features to authenticate devices, network services and individuals to each other. Please click here for a summarized slide narration of NanoPhone’s capabilities.

Mocana Specializes in Cryptography on Devices Mocana specializes in addressing the special needs of constrained device environments, where RAM, CPU cycles and battery power are all at a premium. The NanoPhone suite contains specially optimized cryptographic implementations that typically offer 200% to 400% performance improvements over open-source crypto implementations, while occupying less than 1/10th of the memory space. When crypto is no longer a bottleneck, security becomes completely transparent and users get true 3G/4G experiences from their phones. NanoPhone’s cryptographic implementations have been certified to the US government’s FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standards) 140-2 level one - the highest level awarded by the federal government for cryptography implemented in software. That means developers building with NanoPhone should be able to get much quicker, less expensive federal certifications of their own, should they decide to apply for it (for example, if they are pursuing government, military or financial services contracts).  Deploy Secure Android Applications in Weeks, Not Months Using the NanoPhone suite, developers can significantly streamline security development and testing efforts and roll out new Android security solutions in weeks instead of months. 

Mocana’s extensive testing infrastructure runs thousands of code scripts 24 hours a day, seven days a week to ensure code quality, and the NanoPhone suite ships with over 1,000 unique error codes built-in, so developers can pinpoint their bugs instantly – dramatically reducing development time.  Mocana’s support personnel are available 24x7x365, not just to support product issues, but to assist customers with development issues as well.

Free Trial - Mocana is currently offering Android developers a 90-day free trial. Developers can register at www.mocana.com/evaluate.html to request a free evaluation copy of NanoPhone. For pricing and purchase information, please email sales@mocana.com or call 866-213-1273.

About Mocana - Mocana provides device management solutions and embedded security tools for consumer electronics manufacturers, datacom companies, telecom carriers, industrial automation applications and the enterprise. Mocana's industry-leading infrastructure software solutions ensure that wired and wireless devices, networks and their services all scale securely.  The company sells a portfolio of 18 product offerings and claims more than 90 major customers, including Cisco, Freescale, Philips, Dell, Nortel Networks and Honeywell among others.

Mocana was founded in 2002, is privately held, and headquartered in San Francisco. The company was recently named one of Red Herring's "Top 100 Privately-Held Companies in North America" for 2008 and also won Frost & Sullivan’s Technology Innovation of the Year award.

To request a free full source code and documentation evaluation of Mocana's security solutions, visit www.mocana.com.

Media contact: Gregory P. Funaro Acount Representative Lois Paul & Partners 781-782-5896 Greg_Funaro@lpp.com