Samsung Hires Former Department Of Defense Executive To Help Bolster Smartphone Security: Report

Smartphone security is a major concern for both users and smartphone companies. Samsung has reportedly done something unusual to help its efforts to improve mobile security — it has hired a formed U.S. Department of Defense sleuth.

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Terry Halvorsen a former chief information offer for the Department of Defense has been appointed the executive vice-president of Samsung’s mobile division, the Investor reported Friday.

“Halvorsen will serve as an advisor to Shin Jong-kyun, CEO of Samsung’ IT and Mobile Communication division,” an industry source told the Korean publication.

Halvorsen had retired from the Department of Defense in February and had served as the chief information officer, U.S. department of Navy and the deputy commander at the U.S. naval network warfare division before that. The report says that Halvorsen would likely help Samsung expand its presence in the network security segment in U.S. and Europe.

Hiring him could also be Samsung’s attempt at securing partnerships with government and military agencies — the company has been supplying Galaxy smartphones fitted with its KNOX security program to the Department of Defense since 2014.

If you don’t know what KNOX is — it is a system of secure apps including a browser, contacts, emails and others. It is a security system designed for enterprises, which lets a user enable both business and personal content to co-exist on the same device. The user can simply press an icon to switch between the two.

One of the major features of KNOX is that has an alarm system that sets off an ‘e-fuse’ in case someone is trying to hack into the device using a rooting software.

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Apart from software based security features, Samsung is also improving the hardware based features on its smartphones. The company’s newest device, the Samsung Galaxy S8 comes with both an iris scanner and a fingerprint scanner for security.