Lack of robust security - the death of the Palm OS ?

[Unregistered]

Opinions on this please:

Up until now, many organisations here in the UK which deal in a lot of 'classified' data have not issued employees with PDA's due to the lack to tested, robust security.

I have been informed the at least 3 software security products for the Pocket PC format are be certified to the internationally recognised Common Criteria standard for information systems security.

These products will offer 'on the fly' encryption and will NOT be offered on the Palm platform - the reason, due to the 'bloatware' nature of the Pocket PC OS, Pocket PC's have fairly powerful processors and plenty of RAM. They are therefore capable of running high standard on the fly encryption , Palm devices simply lack the processing power and memory.

I pointed out to a representative of one of the companies that will offer security software that Palm devices with powerful Arm processors are now being released. His reaction was 'too little, to late'. They Will, and some have released scaled down (ie no on the fly encryption) security software for Palm, but have no intention of putting the Palm software through Common Criteria testing.

Essentially, they see Palm as a doomed platform.

[ballistic]

They're wrong. Either highly misinformed or they have another agenda.

Read this http://www.palmsource.com/includes/security.pdf

Palm is addressing robust security in OS5 and above for vertical, enterprise, and government markets.

[iebnn]

Too little? It's faster than PPC OS.

[notmuch]

Technical arguments aside... how many PDA users need to carry "classified" info? IF the Palm OS is eaten by PPC's, security won't be the reason.

[OcellNuri]

That's true as far as consumers go. But in the corporate market PPC has always been more popular than PalmOS... and security is one of these reasons. The new HP with the built in finger-print scanner is going to make it a lot more attractive to a big corporation than any PalmOS device.

[ballistic]

Originally posted by Unregistered


I pointed out to a representative of one of the companies that will offer security software that Palm devices with powerful Arm processors are now being released.

They've been out for 5 months. If this 'representative' wasn't already aware of this fact, then he/she is sadly misinformed, and I'd say that it is their company that is doomed.

[HdIsss]

There have been a few commercial security products available for both Pocket PC & Palm for a few months now, however only the pocket PC versions are being put through Common Criteria evaluation by CESG. Additionaly, the originator of this post is correct, although both Pocket PC and Palm security software will have the same strength encryption, only the Pocket PC variant will encrypt on the fly.

Note, many major UK Corporates, and Govt will only deploy security software that has been fully evaluated.