Securing Mobile Applications for First Responders

The Securing Mobile Applications for First Responders report describes a mobile application (app) pilot testing program designed to serve a public safety purpose. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T)  the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) International, and Kryptowire LLC, an S&T performer, collaborated to identify security vulnerabilities and privacy issues important for public safety users and to recruit app developers to participate in testing and evaluation. This report describes findings from the testing, feedback from the developers who participated in the pilot, technical and program-level lessons learned, and recommended next steps. 

For this pilot, S&T provided the funding and technical support through its funded research with Kryptowire. APCO selected a set of apps for testing, Kryptowire provided access to its testing platform, which was integrated with AppComm to streamline the testing process, and Kryptowire tested the apps based on security criteria identified by the pilot partners.