The world is moving faster than ever before. The basis for this acceleration of private and business life is the mobile networking of every individual. The smartphone as a constant companion ensures that most people are constantly connected and exchanging data for most of the day. Today, 73% of online retail sales and 62% of all online banking transactions are carried out via mobile devices. It is easy to lose sight of the fact that the mobile digital world is associated with risks.

And these risks are blatant: without security measures, every tap on a smartphone, every message and every call is exposed to curious eyes. Potentially, every transaction can be intercepted, every detail spied on and exploited. Insecure smartphones expose our digital lives and pave the way for identity theft, financial fraud and breaches of privacy.

"Companies are well advised to secure their smartphone communications," says Mustafa Alaa Eddine, who is responsible for mobile products at secunet. "For many public authorities, the challenge of mobile security also arises in a more stringent form, namely when dealing with classified information, for which special security requirements apply." In Germany, the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) is responsible for approving software, end devices or network components for classified information.

Expertise in high security

Since the turn of the millennium, secunet has been developing IT products under the name SINA (Secure Inter-Network Architecture) in co-operation with the BSI, which are approved for classified information of various levels. These range from high-security solutions for the German Federal Armed Forces, which fulfil the strict criteria for the GEHEIM (SECRET) classification level, to workstation computers approved for VS-NfD (RESTRICTED), which have been rolled out in numerous German federal ministries and ensure security there.

"Since SINA is highly successful with desktops or laptops as clients, it made sense to extend the technology to smartphones," says Eddine. "That's how the idea for SINA Mobile, our new application suite for secure working with smartphones - at RESTRICTED level - was born."

This level of security is made possible by seamlessly integrating the SINA Mobile app on the smartphone into an existing SINA infrastructure with all its security features. Data transmissions as well as messages and calls are secured with the same powerful encryption that is used in conventional SINA solutions at RESTRICTED level and has been tried and tested for many years. As with SINA laptops, encrypted VPN tunnels ensure that data does not fall into the wrong hands. The smartphone can even be used privately at the same time without compromising the security of the content protected by SINA Mobile. Only the latter is then transmitted via the secure VPN, in strict isolation, while the usual, non-specifically secured connections are available for all other data.

Data does not remain on the device

Even if the smartphone is lost or stolen, users do not have to worry about any data leaks: SINA Mobile does not store any critical data on the smartphone. The data will only be retrieved from the data centre during use. After that, it is no longer available on the device.

In addition to secure working on the move, SINA Mobile offers even more application options: Users can also work fully remotely with the application suite. "This means that my laptop stays in the office while I use SINA Mobile to connect my smartphone to my working environment in the cloud when I'm working from home," explains Eddine. "Alternatively, I can also access the SINA Workstation directly if necessary. I can display the screen content on a monitor in standard format. This turns the smartphone into a fully-fledged working station - wherever I need it."

SINA Mobile for Android and iOS

SINA Mobile is already available for Android. For this version, the BSI has granted an authorization to use with data classified as VS-NfD (as of February 2025). SINA Mobile will initially run on the Android smartphones of the Samsung Knox Enterprise Edition, because the embedded secure element already present in these devices can be used as the necessary security anchor. As part of the SAMSUNG Knox Native authorization to use, this security anchor is approved for VS-NfD. German public authorities are expected to be able to purchase SINA Mobile via the SINA framework agreement from March 2025. The development of an iOS version is already running in parallel. In future, all devices that are approved within the framework of iOS INDIGO will be supported. A sales release for the iOS version is expected by the end of Q2/2025.

"SINA Mobile will change the way we work with sensitive and RESTRICTED-level content," says Mustafa Eddine. "The smartphone now has the ability to be used in these areas without any concerns – and in the usual way.  Thus, SINA Mobile is also helping to narrow the gap in user comfort that used to exist between regular and specially secured IT. Although high security requirements naturally entail some technical effort, users can now benefit from all the advantages of the digital world - and still have confidence in the security of their work content at all times."