The Yota Devices company, which created the Russian smartphone YotaPhone, expects to interest officials and intelligence agencies in it by developing a special solution for protecting information, the reported on Friday. Vedomosti newspaper

New protection for YotaPhone smartphones was created using ViPNet technology together with the developer of information security solutions by the company Infotex, Yota Devices CEO Vlad Martynov told the publication. Documents for certification of this solution have already been submitted to the FSB of Russia. It will be completed within six months.

Martynov said that Infotex has its own software solution based on ViPNet for phones running Android, on which YotaPhone also runs). It has already been certified by the FSB for the minimum protection class (KS1). The new solution on the YotaPhone platform will be certified to a higher class. Martynov believes that this will allow the use of YotaPhone in government information systems and anticipates the demand of government agencies for such devices.

The new solution will be installed on YotaPhone not by default, but as a custom option. There are no such orders yet, but they will appear soon, Martynov is convinced. He did not rule out that the sale of smartphones with a special level of protection to government agencies and intelligence agencies could become one of the business areas of Yota Devices. But he said that the company will not focus only on working with government agencies. On the contrary, he assured the publication, Yota Devices sets itself the task of maximum business scalability.

Vedomosti reported that Russian officials started talking about the use of secure mobile devices after the revelations of American NSA and CIA employee Edward Snowden, who spoke about large-scale surveillance conducted by US intelligence agencies over Internet users.

At the end of March, the Russian government stopped using iPad tablets produced by the American corporation Apple and switched to tablets from the South Korean company Samsung. The head of the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications, Nikolai Nikiforov, decided not to consider this as sanctions against Apple. And he explained that replacing tablets is of a technical nature. Samsung tablets are “specially protected devices,” he explained. “Some of the information at government meetings is confidential, and these devices fully comply with these requirements and have passed the most stringent certification system,” Nikiforov said.

Yota Devices has created a secure smartphone for officials and intelligence agencies