AirWatch Secure Content Locker certified by Australian Signals Directorate

The Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) has certified the security of the AirWatch Secure Content Locker for Apple iOS devices.

AirWatch, a subsidiary of VMware, has achieved “protected” level security status from the Directorate for its enterprise sync and sharing service. As a result, government agencies can now use Secure Content Locker for materials labelled “protected”.

The service met the Directorate’s standards for data at rest where files and credentials can only be read or written when the device is unlocked. The protection also covers data in transit because AirWatch uses native iOS TLS libraries to encrypt data that is sent and received.

Secure Content Locker can be used to secure email attachments, provide user authentication, encrypt files, set effective and expiration dates on content, geofence, share limitations and restrict offline viewing.

AirWatch has deployed the product into various federal and state government agencies, and with the ASD certification hopes to add more, said Rob Roe, managing director of ANZ for AirWatch.

“We worked closely with ASD to enhance the security features of Secure Content Locker to receive PROTECTED level compliance,” he said in a statement.

“Throughout several months of conversations with the Australian government and testing, we’re excited to implement the highest security features available.”

Government has historically been a major market for BlackBerry, which has long touted its security chops. BlackBerry executives continued to make that case at the company’s recent symposium in New York, announcing that the company would be acquiring Secusmart, a German company that encrypts voice calls and texts.

AirWatch has been trying to peel customers from BlackBerry. Last year, AirWatch CEO John Marshall slammed BlackBerry for forcing businesses to buy its MDM platform to fully support BlackBerry 10 devices.

“By not opening up the APIs a year and a half ago with [BlackBerry] OS 10, it was the beginning of the end,” he said at the time.

“That was such a strategic blunder. If they had opened up the APIs and not had the arrogance [to say] that everyone would have to use their management system, then a lot of companies would have said, ‘OK, I’ll support that one as well.’”

Adam Bender covers telco and enterprise tech issues for Computerworld and is the author of dystopian sci-fi novels We, The Watched and Divided We Fall. Follow him on Twitter: @WatchAdam

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