One of the 2014 GCN Award winners is an open source mobile application vetting tool that both the National Institute of Standards and Technology and George Mason University developed for the Defense Department, GCN reported Tuesday.Government and commercial users use AppVet to expedite the app testing and risk assessment process before deployment, William Jackson reports.
The tool’s security architecture and evaluation framework works to shorten the period to deployment by leveraging software assurance, standards-based cryptography and power and reliability analysis, according to the report.
Jackson writes that the NIST-led team developed AppVet in 2012 as part of the TransApps program of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency originally for use in vetting commercial mobile hardware and software for the battlefield.
The tool can also be a reference for the commercial sector on mobile device security as well as address government concerns about bring-your-own-device practices for the public sector, the report said.
“It’s slowly picking up steam, and people are getting interested in it,” said Craig Schlenoff, group leader of the cognition and collaboration systems group at NIST’s intelligent systems division.
