14 DAY TRIAL // Looking to make your phone, tablet or computer more secure? Google’s ATAP team has unveiled during the I/O 2015 developer event in San Francisco a little device that, at a first glance, looks like your usual microSD card.
It’s called Project Vault and does much more than put additional storage to your mobile device. Actually, Project Vault is all about adding an extra level of security, important if you want to protect your personal data.
Google has talked about a Project Vault prototype which includes a low-power ARM processor, NFC chip, 4GB of storage and a real-time operating system.
The search giant is already testing with 500 units internally, but the goal is to launch Project Vault as soon as possible, first as an enterprise product and then for mainstream consumers.
Google's little microSD card can achieve wonders
Since Project Vault is actually a beefed-up microSD card, you can go ahead and slide it into any device that comes with a microSD card onboard. The device will pick it up and show it as a removable drive.
But once you connect Project Vault to your phone, you’ll also be able to encrypt data. Google demoed two handsets equipped with Project Vault communicating with one another and sending messages over a remote server.
While messages were available for view from both problems without interference, all the chat server was able to pick up was cypher text.
Project Vault will take over the operations of hashing, signing and other cryptographic stuff like that. What’s more, not even the phone’s operating system will be granted access to your data.
Actually, your phone or tablet won’t actually “know-how” Project Vault is there, as all the operations are contained in the Vault itself.
Project Vault is compatible with a variety of OS-es including Android, Windows and Linux.
Google has currently released the source for Project Vault software and the developer kit hardware.
We can’t help but smile at Google’s initiative of putting Project Vault onboard of a microSD card, given the fact that the Nexus lineup is notorious for not providing microSD card slot support.
But this might very well change in the near future, with the next Huawei and LG Nexus phones, right?
