“The US military wants to take no security chances with the smartphones it is deploying,” Michael Cooney reports for Network World. “That’s why the engineers at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) today said they are ‘looking to discover new technologies and methods to support full disk and system encryption of the commercial mobile devices — specifically Apple and Android platforms – to include a pre-boot environment to load the operating system.’”

“Securing smartphones has been an ongoing project for the military. In January the US Air Force said it was looking to decide whether or not to use commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) smart phones,” Cooney reports. “The Army has made smartphone development a priority as well.”

Cooney reports, “The military is very interested in getting smartphones out in the field. Last year the Pentagon awarded $6.4 million to the Corporation for National Research Initiatives to build a smartphone app store.”

Read more in the full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "krquet" for the heads up.]