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Securing Android For the Enterprise

Posted by Soulskill on from the lcars-cream-sandwich dept.

Orome1 writes "While many companies use IPsec for secure remote access to their networks, no integrated IPsec VPN client is available on Android. Apple has already fixed this shortcoming in iOS, in part, because it wanted make the iPhone attractive for businesses. The Android operating system doesn't just lack an integrated IPsec VPN client, it also makes installing and configuring third-party VPN software quite complicated. IPsec VPN clients have to be integrated into the kernel of each device, and the client software has to be installed specifically for a memory area. This means that the firmware of each Android smartphone or tablet has to be modified accordingly. Until a 'real' IPsec VPN client is available, Android users can use their devices' integrated VPN clients based on PPTP or L2TP, which is deployed over IPsec. A 'real' IPsec VPN connection, however, is more secure because it encrypts data prior to authentication."

9 of 136 comments (clear)

  1. Oh by deep9x · · Score: 5, Funny

    I really thought this article was going to be about Data.

  2. It's not just about the VPN aspect by geekylinuxkid · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Android needs some sort of remote wipe software to make it even remotely feasible for most businesses. For example, the government requires remote wipe, and some sort of encryption. Until Android has a solution for these two, the VPN-less capability is moot.

    1. Re:It's not just about the VPN aspect by afidel · · Score: 5, Informative

      There are MDM's that provide those capabilities, heck just hook most Android phones up to any ActiveSync compatible server or service and you get basic remote wipe. If it weren't for the fact that we provide Citrix for remote access the limitations on getting most Android devices working with ASA would have been a serious redmark against adoption, but as it stands the huge number of usability problems we ran into trumped everything else. Android is great as a geek OS, and fairly good for a consumer OS (my wife likes her Optimus V just fine), but the persistent issues like WiFi clients that randomly failed to work or the email clients that just stopped receiving email from the Exchange server and required a device wipe and resync to reestablish communications to the weird certificate errors we would get all made it so we were not going to foist it as a platform on our users. We offered them iOS or Blackberry and 2/3rds chose to stay on Blackberry for the superior core email capabilities. Personally I'm still on my Android test device because for me the small nagging flaws are outweighed by a physical keyboard (big plus over an iphone) and huge selection of applications and a decent browser (big win over Blackberry).

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    2. Re:It's not just about the VPN aspect by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Remote wipe has apparently been supported via activesync since android 2.2

  3. Re:Not surprised by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    You're actually more misinformed now. Android does in fact have IPsec capabilities, as well as PPTP and L2TP. Its had this for a while. I don't know why no one's not mentioned that the article is just plain wrong.

    It does lack OpenVPN, though, which has been a bit of a thorn in my side - software exists to add this functionality, but so far they all require root privileges, as far as I know.

  4. Re:Not surprised by aXis100 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I thought the same thing, I've been using the integrated L2TP client on my android phone, and it's only Froyo.

  5. Re:Stupid article is stupid by thegarbz · · Score: 5, Informative

    Stupid article is stupid because the *current* version of Android actually has full native IPSec support. I wish this is just a case of Slashdot being late to post, but TFA is dated Jan 3rd 2012 so it must just be a blogger who's not up with the times.

  6. Already there by Namarrgon · · Score: 5, Informative

    Exchange-based remote wipe support was added in Android 2.2. Encrypted storage and password policies were added in Android 3.0. Full-device encryption was added in Android 4.0, along with an API for third-party VPN solutions, and IPsec support for the built-in VPN client.

    --
    Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
  7. Re:OpenSSH by Karma's+A+Bitch · · Score: 5, Informative

    Hi, new poster here but have been lurking for about a decade -- but as fucked up as IPSec is, there are some important benefits:

    * IPSec tunnels your traffic over an unreliable datagram protocol (either IP protocol ESP or over some UDP port -- I forget the number). This avoids the performance problems of running a reliable protocol (TCP) over another reliable protocol (TCP). Some time since I looked at this, but IIRC, retransmits in the upper protocol kill you. Probably not too bit a problem if you aren't running significant traffic.

    * IPSec is processed in kernel mode which improves processing performance. This isn't as important on the client which is only handling one tunnel as it is on the gateway which is handling many connections and where the CPU load could be important. Disadvantage is that a bug in IPSec is a bug in kernelspace.

    * Of course anyone doing something like this should terminate the IPSec connection on a network outside their LAN and should also consider blocking comms between indials.

    Just wish whoever designed IPSec had done a proper job.