"The reason we need software and devices is to better secure the customer," Vic Hyder, Chief Strategy Officer of Silent Circle, the company behind the secure device Blackphone, told MediaNama at the Mobile World Congress yesterday. "The weakest link in the chain of security is the individual, who is going to install malware on to the device. What we do is protect the operating system and the hardware to better protect the individual from the prevailance of the malware coming in." On why the company needs to do its own hardware, Hyder said that "If we don't know where the hardware came from and we install software on it, whether it's the best encryption in the world or not, you don't know if it's being recorded, and if there's a vulnerability already in that hardware. So we provide the hardware, the operating system and the software that runs on it to give a more holistic solution. The company also has a suite of applications that can be installed on Android and iOS devices, that allow users to text and call securely. So, is that less secure? "It is less secure, if the device is tainted," Hyder said. "What I'm saying is that you have people who have these devices, who can install Silent Phone, Silent Text. As long as it's clean, you have perfectly encrypted communication. If it's not clean, if they've installed something that hasn't been identified by the OS, then there's a weakness there. We provide the OS that will…
