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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."
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?
Why is this tagged as "Apple", "iPhone" and 'iOS"?
... 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
Well, this app is a good move in the right direction. I tested my Android against the Exchange 2k7 ability to remotely wipe emails from a phone and it wiped my whole phone.
Hopefully this fixes that.
That's the policy at my company... if you want the VPN software required to access email through a regular email client, you have to sign a waiver agreeing to give them the ability to wipe your entire phone. I said "no thanks, I'll just keep using OWA when I want to check, even though it sucks."
Stupid sexy Flanders.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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make install -not war