Paschalis Papagrigoriou, inventor of the microSD smartcard and developer of the so-called 'Merkelphone', today disclosed more details about his coming set of IT-security solutions. "The retail banking sector in Europe fails to chalk up on innovative home and mobile banking products, while the tools bank customers have in use are being hacked one after one. The credit card industry has no affordable products on offer for retail merchants - whatever is on the market is by far too expensive, even if it works with a mobile phone. And finally, both the public and enterprise sectors lack a choice of really unbreakable security solutions for voice and data communication - more so while smartphones and tablets are becoming ever more complex and new models appear on the shelves almost at the speed of light. Also, with all the big data exploitation and phone tapping scandals in view, you may come to believe they're not really intended to be unbreakable", Dr. Papagrigoriou said in his statement to the press in Greece.
This, according to Papagrigoriou, started him and his teams at Empelor in Switzerland, Greece and Germany up to build a common platform to support all three areas of security applications. Each version of his new device - one each for mobile banking, for mobile POS and for mobile voice and data protection - shares a common set of security chips with ultra-protected memory which can safely communicate over Bluetooth or Low Energy Bluetooth with smartphones, tablets and PCs. Papagrigoriou strongly upholds his strategy of putting security functions on dedicated hardware separate from the user's standard device. "Even though Google now wants to make us believe that security can be achieved by software only through their Host Card Emulation technology in Android V4.4 KitKat, this may be acceptable with consumers in the US but never will in security-sensitive Europe. This is why our concept of dedicated security hardware - the size of a credit card, only somewhat thicker - is truly disruptive and guarantees its users a successful and secure future. You can replace your smartphone as often as you wish, while your security gadget will stay the same and will keep doing its job. It will even be upgradeable with more security functions when they're needed."
Could those products for the three areas - bank customers, retailers, and employees in the public and enterprise market segments - be combined in one single device, Papagrigoriou was asked. "Certainly so, even though I think this will be a rather rare requirement, but it definitely can be done," the never-resting inventor of new technologies and Empelor CTO replied. "We plan to protective functions to fight new threats that we are not even aware of today."
In a time of bulk-data collecting, increased cyber-attacking and snooping state agencies corrupting people's privacy on a large scale, it will be interesting to watch how these new and reliable privacy protection will fare.
For all curious techies, this new player in the security and vulnerability management market which in 2013 was estimated at 3,3 billion Euros for Germany according to German IT association Bitkom, will have its new products on display on its website www.secocard.ch starting today.
This, according to Papagrigoriou, started him and his teams at Empelor in Switzerland, Greece and Germany up to build a common platform to support all three areas of security applications. Each version of his new device - one each for mobile banking, for mobile POS and for mobile voice and data protection - shares a common set of security chips with ultra-protected memory which can safely communicate over Bluetooth or Low Energy Bluetooth with smartphones, tablets and PCs. Papagrigoriou strongly upholds his strategy of putting security functions on dedicated hardware separate from the user's standard device. "Even though Google now wants to make us believe that security can be achieved by software only through their Host Card Emulation technology in Android V4.4 KitKat, this may be acceptable with consumers in the US but never will in security-sensitive Europe. This is why our concept of dedicated security hardware - the size of a credit card, only somewhat thicker - is truly disruptive and guarantees its users a successful and secure future. You can replace your smartphone as often as you wish, while your security gadget will stay the same and will keep doing its job. It will even be upgradeable with more security functions when they're needed."
Could those products for the three areas - bank customers, retailers, and employees in the public and enterprise market segments - be combined in one single device, Papagrigoriou was asked. "Certainly so, even though I think this will be a rather rare requirement, but it definitely can be done," the never-resting inventor of new technologies and Empelor CTO replied. "We plan to protective functions to fight new threats that we are not even aware of today."
In a time of bulk-data collecting, increased cyber-attacking and snooping state agencies corrupting people's privacy on a large scale, it will be interesting to watch how these new and reliable privacy protection will fare.
For all curious techies, this new player in the security and vulnerability management market which in 2013 was estimated at 3,3 billion Euros for Germany according to German IT association Bitkom, will have its new products on display on its website www.secocard.ch starting today.
