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Android Phones Get Dual Accounts
holy_calamity writes "AT&T is adopting technology that gives a person with an Android device two user profiles, enabling company email and other data to reside in an encrypted partition separate from a user's apps, games and unfettered web browsing. AT&T is calling the feature Toggle, and plans to release it later this year. Toggle is a regular app that, once installed, creates its own encrypted desktop under the control of company IT bosses. Toggle is a rebranding of an app developed by startup Enterproid, which continues to develop its own version. AT&T think this move will encourage smartphone adoption in the enterprise. Interestingly, Apple's current version of iOS and app guidelines exclude multiple profiles on one device."
<wish_this_was_only_humor>
Attention all employees of XYZ Corp, Inc. :
On this date, xxxxxx, XYZ employees are no longer permitted to have Android devices on site. The fact that the maker of said devices regards them as secure devices designed for use by corporate entities, this device is not completely closed-source and has not yet been investigated thoroughly by XYZ. Therefore, this device is not only discouraged for use because we're scared, but any employee using an Android device on company premises will be terminated immediately and with just cause.
</wish_this_was_only_humor>
Smart phones today are, in terms of performance and architecture, not that much different from a notebook computer of a few years ago. Why are people surprised when smart phones today can do stuff that normal PCs could do decades ago, even when these PCs were a small fraction of the power and capability of today's smart phones? Why do so many people mistakenly consider stuff like this to be "innovation", when rather it's just a case of not intentionally limiting the device's capabilities?
does it have a backdoor for big brother?
why should only business data get protection from thieves and the government?
Why is this tagged as "Apple", "iPhone" and 'iOS"?
This will be awesome when it becomes more widely accepted in the corporate space (RIM better have a backup plan!), but how will companies deal with work phone lines? This must put them in a catch-22 position, where they either provide (limited) service for work AND personal use (which is unlikely; most people abuse free things) or compensate users for using their own personal plans for work use. If the latter is the case, will employees feel comfortable with their employers going over their records to justify what should and shouldn't be compensated for?
What would be ideal is if those dual-SIM adapters advanced enough to allow users to use both personal and work SIMs together.
... in a decade far, far away we used to use multi-user operating systems. Which used to keep one user's data private from another - unless they explicitly wished to share. They also let the sysadmin install software packages for everyone to use, or each user could run their own local programs - which could not access other user's data.
Sounds familiar? So why propose a "solution" that only gives application-layer (rather than OS-layer) protection between users? That only protects properly one (corporate) user - isn't my personal data of at least equal value? That can't easily be extended to several users (think "e-banking user" which shares no data at all with "games user")? And there's no inherent reason why the different user programs can't share the same display screen either, with different passwords and screen lock timeouts - so you don't need a password to run Angry Birds, but do to unlock your contacts.
Andrew Yeomans
that number in the tens!
Actually, I see the number 1 use case for this as cheating on a partner.
This idea was discussed in a meeting with the various CxOs yesterday, where I work. While the recent Blackberry outage brought this to everyone's attention, the big kicker is people don't like carrying two phones.
In government, really only RIM has gone thru FIPS compliance testing and that is one of the big reasons they are so popular. Our CIO brought up that Apple has been taking the iPhone thru FIPS compliance testing and he was looking forward to being able to get an iPhone instead of the Blackberry.
That is until I pointed out the only way it'll pass compliance is if the iTunes Store is disabled and you can't load any apps on the phone. Did he want an iPhone with only the default Apple apps? "Uh, no." was the answer. And neither will anyone else.
Being able to have one phone is the key. This could be an interesting step in that direction.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Nokia's Symbian OS has offered a similar feature for years... not that the rest of Symbian was that great. Congrats(?) to AT&T for making it sound like an exciting new idea.
giggity
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but if you compromise the phone, don't you also compromise the app? This is like some of the "solutions" I've seen from people that want to use their home computers to connect to sensitive enterprise resources (e.g., VPN). "Oh, why don't we distribute organization-approved VM images to the people to run on their home desktops?"
I mean, if you can't trust the host, you sure as heck can't trust the guest. And the encryption is just a feel good red herring that doesn't really solve that problem.
Really an OS based on linux can be multiuser... with multiple partitions and encryption even.
If this is "innovation", how innovative would it be to add a supplemental library with wchar types and "port" a slew of gtk+ apps.
How about a phone that can use two SIM cards at the same time? So we can actually make carriers compete against each other. This is a feature that Android is sorely lacking.
What, carriers don't want any features that might actually empowers their consumers or helps them get away from the "subsidized" (aka bought on credit) phone handset scam? Not to mention, having multiple plans or prepaid SIM cards is also a great way to dramatically cut international roaming costs.
Remember the technologically advanced 90s? Phones used to have that feature back then.
The proximity between the two ./ subject is fun...
"m'a I'm getting arrested is enhanced by 'dual profile'", so you can broadcast your familly without allerting your boss (or the other way round YMMV :-))
Sure is a lot cheaper than a rack of Nauri.
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/04/70619
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What we really need is the 3G/4G/++ telco cartel broken so that my phone can have accounts on two networks simultaneously, so I'm not locked into a single failurepoint - that frequently fails. Just like LANs to the Internet, which can have dual WANs without prohibitive subscription rates.
In fact a second WWAN connection that's rarely used could cost more per bandwidth than the primary WWAN, so the telcos would each make a fatter profit off the "insurance" second WWAN.
So it's obvious that the telcos care more about their cartel and its power to do whatever it wants without consequences (universal warrantless wiretapping, anyone?) rather than actual increased profit and improved service for their customers.
--
make install -not war
When I got my Nexus 1 back in Jan 2010 I loved everything about it except one thing. Using the search function on the phone did not return results from the calendar. I was trying to manage about 48 patients and frequently needed to be able to look at their appointment schedules going out a year. Before getting the Nexus 1 I had used Palm PDAs for almost 10 years. The search function in Palm OS brought back calendar items from day one. How could it be that a search company's operating system could miss a feature that was standard issue for 10 years in a freakin' Palm PDA?
I can get calendar search results now, but I have to use a third party app to do it. That's weak. What business is going to want to trust an app written by some unknown developer in China or Russia with access to their sensitive calendar data? It's Google's OS, it's google's calendar. Why the f**** can't they search it?
Somebody didn't look in the Settings, under Search -> Searchable Items, did they? It's all there for those who RTFM.
Android versions 2.0 and later already support multiple accounts. My own phone has 2 accounts associated with it, and would have more if I could stomach using MotoBlur. Things like securely checking (and, depending on the infrastructure, syncing) corporate email and calendar can be done without a "split personality" device, but I guess that just doesn't fly in the case of IT control freaks.
Why does iCloud shackle us to using one AppleID for every aspect of the service?
For example, I don't want to sync my Bookmarks with my wife's computer and iphone, but I do want to share photographs.
My AT&T Samsung Galaxy S 2 does this now.
Google's search function has a raft of checkboxes for allow it to search the data for pretty much every application on the phone. Maybe you should look into getting one or waiting for the Nexus Prime.
It's about time! For those who have Communal IPads at work that you have to manage and share this is a very exciting step in the right direction. This is the biggest downfall of many of these "Do everything Portable Devices", especially for business purposes, but for phones it doesn't seem all too necessary and may be a pain in the arse. Why would you need 2 accounts, just encrypt the whole shabang. GET TO THE MULTIPLE USER ACCOUNTS ON THE IOS APPLE and Make my job easier.
Actually I've looked at it in the past and I'm looking now in case something changed recently, and NO, the calendar does NOT appear in the searchable items list. I have to use searchify (a third-party app as I mentioned) in order to get any calendar results.
In the future, please refrain from responding to my posts. Thank you.
I am running Android 2.3.6. and all my applications are up to date. On the Nexus 1 there are no "overlays", just plain Android. If you're getting calendar results from a search I think they are coming from Samsung's overlay on Android or from a third party app you installed and forgot about, not from Android or from a Google authored app. Exhaustive web searches indicate that Google has not produced anything that searches the Google calendar short of opening a web browser and doing it manually.
I discovered this missing feature when I wanted to check on a patient's series of scheduled appointments. I enter the patient's name, I get their contact, I get web search results for the name, instances of the name in notes, ebooks, etc. but no calendar results. I was shocked. Everything else on the phone works so well I just couldn't figure out why the search company could search everything on the phone and everything on the web except the calendar. WTF?
How come we don't have a post about this today?
http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/10/14/8322935-verizon-wireless-now-tracking-sharing-sites-you-visit
Verizon Wireless is overstepping its boundary by doing this BS.
Cyanogenmod & I'm pretty sure vanilla android has supported this Nativity in the OS for what feels like years...
They essentially want to create sandboxes or jails like on my favorite OS Freebsd.
It can only work if android had been created with this in mind. The problem is that hackers will probably figure out how to get into the other sandbox if the sandbox mechanism isn't well designed. Encryption isn't enough since the decode key resides on the device. Further what about one sandbox sniffing the others network traffic? That's why the OS has to be designed with it in mind.
But the idea of a separate desktop controlled by a companies IT department is a winner. It means they can control and manage software versions and updates and install their own apps and lock out everything else. No misconfiguration on the users part. Mandatory security settings designed to work for the business. Just a solid bare bones business experience and segregated data. I like it very much.
Because they want you to have one phone for personal, and another phone for the business...to boost the sell!
Is that so hard to understand?
It is probably the same reason there isn't native syncing of tasks. My US Robotics Pilot 1000 was a more capable PDA than my Dell X51v or my HTC Desire when used out of the box. Contact, Calendar and ToDo searching was so darned fast. I think makers of current smartphones have dropped the ball on the PDA side of things. Why don't my Exchange tasks sync? Why do I need an add on app for Google Calendar tasks to sync. Just stupid!