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The Smartphone - A Real
The rise of the smartphone over the past few years has been a technology success story.
An almost perfect storm of advancing materials science, chip set development, software innovation and social networking has
fuelled the progress in handset design and capability beyond that which could be imagined only a couple of decades ago. Having such tremendous computing power, alongside user’s private data and contacts makes a tempting target for criminals. It could be argued that the security industry has been slow in recognising the threat to such devices so only now are we seeing products and services designed to improve smartphone security. Very few businesses want their data to be less mobile, aside from those that have just gone through a major data loss incident and are hurriedly trying to bolt the doors after the data has gone. In fact many businesses seem to pride themselves on the mobility of their data, on the basis that their employees will be accessing work related data at all times of the day or night and will therefore be more productive. Whether employees are actually more productive is another discussion, but certainly the drive to mobilise data has resulted in the endpoint of most organisation’s network being in the handbag or pocket of their employees. One exciting part of data mobilisation is the tidal wave
of smartphones being used by businesses to access their data. But what are the particular security issues and opportunities that these smartphones present? Of course data is more mobile than ever before. Few people pause to consider why we should automatically assume that all data should be made mobile. Very few computer security types are successful in stopping this demand, certainly outside a handful of top secret establishments. One of the first questions many a new employee will ask is how they can connect their smartphone to the data they use. After all the success of web sites such as
salesforce.com is based on the fact that, like all cloud computing solutions, the data can be made available from anywhere. A young in age workforce knows nothing other than mobile computing. Most businesses accept mobile computing and, during this inevitable embrace, need to decide how to best protect their data. After all, the smartphone is where it is happening. Try to go into a phone shop and buy a phone that
doesn’t, at least, have some “smart” features and you will have a problem. Some organisations that try and equip their workforce with phones that don’t have a camera for security reasons have a problem. Some manufacturers have woken up to this and are now producing basic phones, especially for the older generation that may need improved handset accessibility. Consider that the biggest growing group
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