Living Your Life on a Mobile Device, Securely

“As part of my life at Bluebox I’m not only obsessed with the security, but trying to live my entire life by just using my phone … I’m trying to do everything on my phone. And that means I have to not only have a great experience and speed, the basic ability to do everything, but I have to secure it as well,” explained Adam Ely (@adamely), CSO of Bluebox Security, in our conversation at the 2015 Black Hat Conference in Las Vegas.

To live a secure mobile life, Ely had to become beta tester number one for his own company and the most critical user of his product.

I asked what he felt were the hottest spots that needed to be secured and he mentioned both users and the fact that threats are happening on devices. The hackers are using that to steal data or as a pivot point.

I asked Ely what he’s learned from the experience and what’s the one piece of advice he could bestow on others looking to live a secure mobile life.

“Think about the apps you’re using and where you’re putting the data and the permissions. And then remember that the mobile device is a zero trust ecosystem,” said Ely. “We have to assume we’re starting from a zero trust state and build security on top of that. And security may be the applications we use, the security frameworks of those applications, the processes, or just the decisions that we make.”