Cryptography firm Certicom has announced a cross-platform security toolkit for future mobile phone handsets. The Certicom Security Architecture for Mobility will provide a common programming interface for developers to access . . .
Cryptography firm Certicom has announced a cross-platform security toolkit for future mobile phone handsets. The Certicom Security Architecture for Mobility will provide a common programming interface for developers to access functions such as encryption across various mobile chipsets and operating systems, according to the firm. The move should speed development of handsets with better security.

Certicom's Security Architecture for Mobility (CSA) builds on the company's Security Builder Middleware, a hardware abstraction layer that is optimised to work with a specific chipset or hardware platform. The first supported hardware will be Intel's Wireless Trusted Platform, which consists of security functions that are built into Intel's PXA270 series of XScale mobile chips. CSA will support this from the fourth quarter of this year, and support for other mobile platforms will follow.

"Pressure for greater security is coming from enterprise customers. [Security] used to be seen as an add-on to IT systems, but lately it has been regarded as something that has to be embedded from the beginning," commented Certicom's vice-president of marketing, Roy Pereira.

CSA has resulted from Certicom's collaboration with Intel on security for a major handset vendor, Pereira said. He declined to name the vendor, for commercial reasons. Handset vendors are focused on applications, not cryptography, Certicom said, and its middleware layer lets them easily build in cryptography support, shortening the development time and giving handset makers a common interface for encryption functions no matter what the underlying chipset is.

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