Mission Undroppable: Extreme Mobile Device Physical Security TPS-0151

I'm gonna talk about some developments that I've made in what I would call extreme mobile device physical security.

And it's not so much about using lock boxes or other types of technologies to prevent physical access, but more on the spectrum of securing it by tethering it to the body in a way that is gonna prevent it from getting lost or misplaced or stolen in a very haphazard manner.

Which is how often people lose track of their phones, not because of malice, but because of negligence, generally leaving it out, leaving it plugged in to charge.

And there are situations where it's critical that you not misplace that device, because depending on the terrain or the environment or the operation that you're engaged in whatever sector, civilian or otherwise, it can be very compromising to lose track of that device.

And it can be very difficult to find if you're in situations where, if it falls out, the odds of you being able to find it, even if you haven't moved on from that point, they're very slim.

There are more forgiving environments. If I've only been here and there, it has to be one of those places or in between, and that's between the car and the house, or something like that.

If that's the setup of your life, we don't all have that setup, but that can minimize the risk to a degree.

But there are other situations, other terrains or other types of operations, where you're not going back to that point that you were just at, where could have been dropped or lost it.

Then, on top of that, if it were to be compromised in some way, then that could have its own set of issues, depending on your threat model.

So it's always worth shoring up these fundamentals.

I'm always evolving. So for many years, since the Forest Defense Tree sitting that I did, where we learned very quickly to use carabiners and rope of whatever kind to clip in anything that would be in our pockets, even putting duct tape and rope around lighters.

Because anything falling out of your pockets from the height of the old growth forest canopy could be very harmful to people on the ground who are trying to do things like cycle your excrement safely in a hygienic manner, and supply your food and whatnot when you're up in the tree, Tree sitting.

So it became a tradition among us, that's going back almost 25 years to when, I learned those habits and then keys, wallet phone, becomes the mantra of also keys, wallet, phone securely clipped with now a paracord and carabiner in various ways, in order to minimize the chance that if something falls out of your pocket, it gets lost, it falls somewhere that you never are able to get back to or find it again.

So it should just be hanging off of your person, and you should be able to retrieve it and put it back in your pocket.

And there's other values to that, because sometimes you're multitasking. I've got a multi tool that's clipped on paracord where I could be using it and if I need to quickly do something else I can just drop it at the side of my leg and then pull it back up and keep using it.

So you kind of have this tool belt that has extensions in a way out of your pockets, and that's often how I roll.

If I'm working on a task or building something or fixing something, there'll be this action going on.

Another important factor, going back to the mobile device, is that I have the length of the paracord, securing the device so that it is both convenient for using the phone, holding it up.

I don't so much hold it up to my ear. I'd rather use a wired or wireless device, bluetooth.

It’s critical that the phone is able to reach all the way up to holding it to my ear.

But the most important thing is it's, it's more forgiving on how far up you can hold the phone to your face. But what matters most is that the length of the drop from the point of anchoring to your pants, that phone does not hit the floor so you don't want it to bounce off the ground, even if it has a hard shell, like I have for mine.

I don't want it to fall out of that shell, which I'll get to in a minute.

I don't want it to impact the ground and damage the shell, if at all possible.

So the fact that it can slip out of my hands or slip out of my pocket, and if I'm standing up, it's not gonna hit the ground.

And if I'm not standing up, well, then it's that much less of a height for it to drop to hit the ground.

So that's one advantage.

So now I'm gonna take us on a little bit of a visualization exercise to be able to follow this schematic of what I'm doing now, which is the latest iteration of securing that mobile device using, again, this pattern of paracord and carabiners.

So it started off very crude. Just basically tying knots from a belt loop if I wanted to anchor it at a higher point, or a more discrete and lower point tie an end of the paracord into the button hole of the side cargo pocket.

There's two of those holes. And I've gone back and forth between wanting to use the rear or the front of those for different reasons, like if I wanted to actually continue to use the button, even with less space for the button to do its thing.

So if you can imagine, and this is where I've evolved to now, I like it being a little more discrete.

If you anchor the cord to your belt loop, then whatever pocket the phone goes in, you're exposing that line, which isn't necessary.

If you store the phone or the mobile device, you store it in the cargo pocket, and it just happens to have an anchor point also in the buttonhole of that pocket.

So you reach in your pocket, you lift up the phone.

It's attached to paracord, you drop it, it doesn't hit the floor.

You put it back in your pocket, and that's all it takes. That's as minimalistic as it needs to be.

But if you wanna go extreme, the way I do, because I've had that fail, is that I wanna create redundancy in the security of the knots and the carabiner as clipping the device, because you do want it to be convenient to rotate it out.

You wanna be able to unclip it rather than have a knot tied to the pants.

Because when you cycle through pants for hygiene, washing them, etc, or when they fall apart, which happens over time, then you're gonna wanna cycle the phone to other pants or other shorts.

So carabiners are an obvious choice. However, they're not always reliable. And so I've had mixed results with these types of carabiners that have a screwing mechanism to secure them, so once you clip it in, it doesn't unclip itself accidentally.

And those screwing mechanisms, again, I've had mixed results. I don't trust them because they can work themselves loose.

So what I have done as the counter measure to that is actually double up the carabiners and then reverse them in opposite directions.

It's difficult to explain, but if you can imagine that if you have two carabiners that are matching in their orientation to each other, then if something pushes against them to release them, it'll be that much easier for them both to go at the same time.

It's probably less likely that both would go at the same time than just one.

So it's an efficient extra measure, but to reverse the positioning of them.

There's different ways to do it. But if you can imagine that, let's just say one release point is at the top, one release point is at the bottom.

So whatever that force was that was gonna accidentally release those carabiners, it's going to have to do some magic bullet type, acrobatics in order to actually release unexpectedly accidentally, which you don't want.

So to have that much extra of an effort to make in order to get past that security mechanism that's great.

I have done that in the past for various things, just double carabiners or reverse their positioning.

So if it slips out of one, the chances of it slipping out of the other at that exact moment are slim.

Then hopefully I will catch that and notice it and then reattach both of them.

So that's an extra level security. What I added to that system, as of now is actually, I realized for the first time that within that cargo pocket, with those two buttonholes, the right size carabiners, as they don't have to be that big.

I don't know if these are maybe 2 ", but they're, they're kind of lightweight, but they do the job, and they're secure enough, but you can split them so that one of them attaches to one buttonhole, the other one attaches to another buttonhole.

And that's even better redundant security for me, because I always worry about enough force would rip that buttonhole apart so that your carabiner would just fall off.

If you get caught in a door or caught on a post, and when you have these cords hanging, sometimes they do get caught on things.

That's why I try to keep them tucked away as much as possible.

But if they have even a little bit exposed, and you're walking past something, it can get snagged and then, and if there's enough force, it's gonna rip one of the ends off.

And the first thing to go, potentially, given the strength of paracord and knots and the strength of the carabiners, it's gonna rip off the clothing, rip through that hole.

So again, now that those two carabiners are doing their job to keep the paracord anchored to both of them, to limit the chance of the paracord slipping off, it's still providing that function.

And now it has two points of contact anchoring into the buttonholes of the pants, which is great.

So that gives me a lot more confidence that first section of anchoring to the pants, it's now highly secure.

And then another enhancement is that I doubled up the paracord so essentially it's more like a loop than a single strand and that means that the strength of the knots at both ends, the system of knots that I'm using, and I'm not perfect with my not terminology.

But I believe I'm starting with a hitch and then doing an overhand, to secure that hitch.

But basically it is very strong and with that loop system, you far more strength and stability and security with making knots on that loop, not only because you're doubling the strength and you're creating a bit of redundancy in a sense, but the the potential for knots to slip out, it's minimized.

I enhance the security and the redundancy of and the strength of the paracord system of knots going from one end to the other.

And so that kind of squares away the anchoring of the paracord, which now that system could be applied to keys, wallet, etc.

And there's some combination of that going on for me as well.

But the thing that gets used most for me is the phone.

And the thing that would be most costly to replace, and most critical would be the phone.

So I'm adding some measures to that and applying them ongoing to other items.

But with that base anchor point explained now I want to get into even more nuance, which is very interesting about the way in which I am now currently attaching the mobile device, which is in a protective outer shell.

And there's various types of those on the market.

Mine is one that has three pieces to it. There is starting from the phone, the phone itself, which I'm so used to it being surrounded by these three layers of shells that when I take it out to clean it, sometimes it gets dusty or moisture, whatnot.

It feels very vulnerable. I would not wanna have just that phone in my pocket, it's could slide out at any time, anywhere.

And I'm grateful that these engineers have created these shells.

So the first layer is what snaps in, and it's hard plastic with a plastic clear screen protector and that first layer of a hard shell, it snaps together it's very snug it has holes in it for all of the attachment points of devices and peripherals and whatnot and then there is a rubber outer shell around that, which gives it some moisture protection, water resistance to a degree, and a little bit of a more easy to handle kind of texture.

Then that allows the phone to be secure and somewhat water resistant and definitely shock proof, absorbing impact.

That can be detached from and be snapped into, even in a thicker outer plastic shell, which it snaps into and then it has a belt clip, which I've found the belt clip to be inadequate that easily can bounce off, and I don't like the way that hangs.

I don't want it to be accessible in that way. So there is a bit of a hole in that belt hook that I can tie paracord to.

What I've done now is I've used a key ring, essentially attached through that hole on that belt clip, which I don't use the belt clip, but it has enough of a hole in it that I can run the ring through it so that then becomes a more flexible, more dynamic attachment point for the paracord knots.

I've got the hard shell, and I'm tying the ends of the paracord to the key ring that I've attached to that shell, so that secures the shell.

But what about the potential for the phone to fall out of that shell, which does happen, even though I think it is a very well engineered system.

The fact is, for the phone to be usable within the shell you can't, have it be secured in a way where there's bars going across the screen obviously it's gonna interfere with the usability of the phone so it has to clamp onto the edges of the phone.

Which is an engineering challenge, which I think they did a great job with. But there's always a chance for it to be convenient to snap in. It's also gonna be, potentially with very minimal force at a very typical angle. It could be popping out all the time.

So it doesn't happen all the time, but it happens once in a while. It happened again recently to where I said, I can. I've gotta square that away. I cannot live with that potential anymore.

I have done various things in the past to mitigate that.

When the system was starting to fail, starting to get old, it was wearing down, so there wasn't enough tension within it to hold it in place.

It is very sub optimal. What I chose to do, was use rubber bands, that did create that obstruction on the screen, but it held it more securely.

If that was my only option, then I would do that.

Imagine your hiking, and you pull out your phone and then you bump into something, you're not paying attention to it, and it pops out of that shell, and it's gone.

So the idea to reinforce it in situations where it's gonna be impossible to find it.

If it falls out, then that's where you up the level of security in my opinion.

But again, with that obstruction, it was really annoying. I did it again for a couple days testing it again I said no way this is this is dangerous in itself.

I can't operate the phone, and if I needed to in an emergency, and this was in the way, it could be compromising.

So I did start to look at the various potential attachment points on that outer rubber shell, the sort of middle shell.

I did find that it was possible to put a key ring through one of the sides and one of the holes in that rubber that wasn't essential, like, I didn't wanna block where the power cable was gonna go in, and I didn't wanna expose areas that are where it's trying to be water resistant to other peripheral attachment points. So there was a point on one side where I was able to not have those issues attach a key ring.

Then, what to me is very exciting in terms of preserving the functionality of all the different parts of the phone and uses of it, is that if you need to use the camera for whatever reason, recreational or emergency or security or whatever, then you don't want it to be too cumbersome for that shell to be all secured together.

So again, the rubber bands would make that an issue. So I wanted to be able to have the ability to snap it out and to use it to take pictures, but to keep the the outer shell and the phone connected in a way to where, if the phone is out, I don't want it to be able to take the phone and set it down somewhere and forget about it and be lost.

I put all this effort into securing it to the pants. if I'm able to remove it from that shell, then I'm potentially nullifying all my measures that I just created.

So what I did was I left enough length at the end of the paracord that's gonna attach to the phone so that I could make a first attachment point to that key ring that is on the the belt clip on the outer shell.

So the first point of tension when that phone is dropped or yanked or anything, it's not gonna rip off the rubber inner shell.

It's going to tug on the far more secure key ring and belt clip hole.

That's a very hard, thick plastic that's on the rugged outer shell.

So the first point of tension, if the phone drops or is tugged, it's gonna stop at a hard point.

But then there's enough length of the paracord the two strands of paracord of that loop beyond that point, so that extra paracord can tie onto the softer rubber attachment point into that key ring.

So if that makes any sense at this point, the beauty of that is that what you now have is a detachable, yet secure double attachment point on the phone.

So that serves two functions. Number one, I'm able to, at my leisure, pop the phone out, use it for its camera and light functions, etc.

QR code scanning, or whatever you may be doing.

But it doesn't leave the system of attachment.

It just is released. So when I pop it out and I'm holding the phone, the outer shell that's still connected my pants, it just hangs down for a minute, and then when I'm done, I snap it back in and it has those two points of connection.

So then the other function is not just so that it's still accessible as a camera, etc.

But if, for any reason, that hard attachment point is breached, either from a hard tug or because it wears out, or it just gets in an awkward position and it snaps off.

If that first attachment point fails, then there is now a second attachment point, which is not as strong, but it gives me an extra bit of time.

If I hear a snap, let's say you're climbing a rock, or climbing a tree, or at some height of any kind, for whatever reason, climbing anything, this thing falls out of your pocket, somehow gets snagged.

It pops off, you hear it snap and break off of that first attachment point.

Well, then, if you're quick, you'll look down, and you'll see, oh, it's still hanging by that softer point, and I better grab that and repair it and do a pit stop on that.

And again, depending on what your lifestyle is, this could be overkill.

That's why I'm calling it extreme. It could be mountain biking.

It could be any kind of operation where it's just life and death not to lose this device.

And so that could be any situation, especially if you're using it for critical communications in a critical moment where even other people's lives are are on the line.

So I think this is not thought through enough, and it takes a bit of Macgyverring and evolution of practice, but I'm certainly, I'm up for this.

I'm on board for this. I've had enough mishaps in my life.

And every time I hear someone say, where's my phone? I lost my phone. And be panicking, I think about how worthwhile it is to think like this.

And maybe you look a little weird to some people, but there's a way to be more discrete about it.

Certainly, I just use black paracord, and I evolved to a point where I tuck it away in a pocket.

And so if I don't wanna be seen using something so highly secured, then I can be discrete if I want.

But the point is, there's no obstruction of the screen.

It's double anchored, secured at both ends, and it has not sacrificed any functionality.

And now, whereas it was easy to pop out and fall out of that the outer shell, it's now tethered at the final point to that shell, with the most feasible option.

So that is that I hope you adapt that on some scale, and you never have an excuse to lose your phone again, and neither do I.