Technology to secure payment apps from malware launched

Intercede's MyTAM (My Trusted Application Manager) is aimed at apps for financial services and payment applications.

It lets apps be loaded directly into the chipset of a phone, in the Trustonic Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) that is included in many newer Android devices. This protects the application and its data from malware and other software threats, Intercede said in a statement.

Many apps contain malware that can be used to gain access to data from other apps. All apps uploaded to the TEE, however, must be pre-screened by Trustonic, a spokesman for Intercede said. Trustonic adds security keys during manufacturing, so that applications can only run within their own 'secured silos' on the chipset and each individual app is protected from any threat from other software.

For MyTAM to work, the phone must have an ARM processor with Trustonic's TEE installed. Intercede chief innovation officer Nick Cook told ZDNet that this includes most new Samsung Galaxy phones, and some HTC handsets – and could be added by firmware updates to other devices.

When a user downloads the app from Google Play, or other app stores, extra code will also download automatically from Intercede's MyTAM cloud service, and install the app on the TEE, Intercede said.

The service could also be used in companies where users bring their own devices to work and want to run corporate services, plus it will allow secure, encrypted voice calls over the internet, ZDNet said.

Richard Parris, chief executive of Intercede, said that the majority of the world's "smart devices" are now Android-based, and so "it is imperative to ensure that any mobile apps running on this open platform can be both trusted and protected from attack by rogue agents. With the Trustonic TEE built into more than 250 million devices, the market for the service is large and growing."