Further to the announcement on 4 April 2011, and following clearance of the transaction by the relevant competition and regulatory authorities, Vodafone today announced the completion of the disposal of its entire 44% shareholding in SFR to Vivendi.

Vodafone has received a cash consideration of €7.75 billion (£6.8 billion2) from Vivendi and a final dividend from SFR of €200 million (£176 million). Vodafone and SFR have also entered into a Partner Market agreement which will maintain their commercial co-operation.

The £4 billion associated share buyback programme will commence shortly.

New market forecasts from Juniper Research indicate that currently less than 1 in 20 smartphones and tablets have third party security software installed in them, despite a steady increase in threats from device loss/theft, malwares and viruses. However, the increasing extent to which personal and corporate data is stored on mobile devices and the recognition of the need to protect it will create a $3.6 billion opportunity for mobile security software providers by 2016, it says.

The mobile security opportunities report found that mobile security software is rapidly becoming as essential on a handheld as it is on a desktop or notebook computer. The increasing popularity of smartphones and tablets makes this particularly relevant as many users are now accustomed to accessing e-mails, websites and performing online transactions on the move, thereby storing more and more potentially sensitive data.

Report Author Nitin Bhas stated, “We believe that the market for mobile security products will go mainstream by late 2013 as the vulnerability of data centric mobile devices becomes more widely appreciated both in the business and consumer sectors.  High-profile security alerts are likely to heighten the public’s awareness of this growing issue.”

Juniper predicted that just as consumers currently purchase and install Internet security products for their PCs and laptops; they will begin to include mobile devices to the list of electronic devices that they must secure.

Other key findings include:

·         Enterprise security market for tablets, smartphones and feature phones will contribute towards 69% of the total mobile security product sales revenue by 2016.

·         Juniper believes that as more tablets are brought into the enterprise over the forecast period, the proportion of tablets featuring security product will also increase and will overtake the protected smartphone user levels.

·         277 million mobile devices will have some kind of protection installed by 2016

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Cellcrypt, a provider of encrypted voice calling on mobile phones, today announced that it has launched Cellcrypt Mobile for Android, a version of its encrypted voice calling application that runs on Android devices operating over Wi-Fi, GSM and CDMA wireless networks.

Cellcrypt Mobile provides encrypted voice calling for off-the-shelf cell phones using government-certified security in an easy-to-use downloadable application that makes highly secure calling as easy as making or placing a normal phone call.  It is a software-only solution that uses the IP data channel of cellular (2G, 3G, 4G), Wi-Fi and satellite networks and can be deployed to personnel anywhere in the world in as little as 10 minutes.

Cellcrypt Mobile is in use by governments and corporations globally, uses cryptography certified to U.S. government National Institute of Standards and Technology FIPS 140-2 security standards and has been awarded the CESG Claims Tested Mark (CCTM) from the U.K. government’s information assurance authority.

The interception threat level increased during 2010 as hackers developed, demonstrated and published details of low-cost air-interface interception equipment that uses open source software freely downloadable from the internet and a generic off-the-shelf radio transceiver costing less than $2,000. Another group of hackers demonstrated interception in December 2010 using four modified cell phones as transceivers each costing $15. At least one top-tier European University has added practical lessons in GSM interception to its curriculum.

“Cellular voice interception is different from other types of data breach,” said Nigel Stanley, Practice Leader, Security at Bloor Research, “if you lose a laptop, USB stick or disk drive it can be fairly obvious that the data has gone missing.  But with voice, a successful interception can leave no physical trace so there is little chance of realizing your data has actually been intercepted resulting in disastrous consequences. If you can compromise a cell phone then you are more or less assured that you can collect the most relevant, current and damaging data possible about a user, their business or their private life. By supporting Android devices, Cellcrypt is providing enhanced security for one of the world’s most popular mobile platforms.”

At the same time as the threat level is increasing, the use of cell phones for discussing sensitive and confidential information has also increased, even among government employees, due to the ease of use, ubiquity and interoperability of mobile phones. This leads to an increased need for government-grade end-to-end protection that provides assurance that call security is controlled along all points of the call path between caller and recipient and risks are adequately mitigated in compliance with internal security policies.

“We are seeing a growing tension between organizational security requirements and personal convenience requirements with people often discussing sensitive issues on mobile phones to get their jobs done faster or because they have no other practical choice.” said Richard Greco, CEO of Cellcrypt, continuing, “With Cellcrypt’s support of Android we are meeting the usability demands of a fast-growing user base whilst continuing to help organizations meet their operational security requirements.”

Cellcrypt Mobile for Android is available on devices supporting Android 2.3 and is interoperable with Cellcrypt running on other devices such as Nokia and BlackBerry smartphones.