We are living in an interesting conundrum these days. At one end there are governments asking for access to Blackberry servers to keep an eye on public data. There is news of phone hackings galore. At the other end there is a huge ruckus around privacy issues be it Facebook, Google etc.

Which is why two recent launches raising the privacy flag were extremely interesting.

A French company, Ercom, provides crypto gateway solutions for operators and customer premises to manage authentication and encryption of voice and data flows. They’ve announced a partnership with another French player, device design and manufacturer Sagem Wireless.

The aim is to launch devices offering embedded security for voice, SMS and data theft through attacks via Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. As compared to add on applications which are currently on offer today, these devices provide a blend of network expertise, telecom protocol integration and cryptology. The first devices to come to market will provide voice encryption security, ensuring device-to-device, device-to-enterprise and machine-to-machine security.

Another launch was by Giesecke & Devrient (G&D). They are launching a new microSD card which includes a cryptocontroller to encrypt cell phone conversations and provide securely authentication.

The card uses two-factor authentication to confirm their identity i.e a card and a PIN. But the key advantage of the G&D card is the speed with which it calculates 521 bit long keys based on elliptical curve cryptography, the strongest security in the market for the microSD form factor.

What’s interesting is that suddenly all the security solutions are talking about voice encryption rather than mobile finance and payment solutions. Federal prosecutors in the US with all the phone tapping action would not be very happy people, would they?