Just like Alcatraz, the walls of Apple’s iOS can be jailbroken Getting Physical
The encryption issue is an important one, argues Alexander Gad, managing director of Compulocks, which specializes in physical security devices for laptops and tablets. “The cost of replacing the tablet is not the receipt for a new device”, he says. “It’s the data you have on it that’s important.”
Gad observes that when connected to an electrical outlet and plugged to a number of peripherals, the likelihood of a laptop being stolen falls. “With a tablet, the whole discussion of closing the device and detaching it from peripherals is suddenly non-existent”, he adds. Thieves can easily swipe such a small, pocketable device. Compulocks sells tablet covers with a security lock integrated into the skin. The lock can be used to seal the cover and affi x a metal tethering cable to a secure fi xture. While Apple and Google duke it out for supremacy in tablet security, Research in Motion is busy fi ghting its own battles. The company’s much-maligned Playbook tablet, which has experienced sub-par sales, is based on QNX, an operating system that it purchased from Harman International in 2010. Traditionally, the company has enjoyed a solid security reputation with its Blackberry OS and BlackBerry Enterprise Server platforms, but in December, hackers released DingleBerry, a tool to jailbreak the Playbook’s alternate operating system. The company issued an over-the-air patch for its system in early December, only to watch hackers break it again the following day.
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That said, the Playbook has a security feature that the others don’t; it doesn’t store work data locally. It uses BlackBerry Bridge to tether to a BlackBerry device, essentially becoming an even thinner client for
If you had a VPN connection to your enterprise and someone jailbroke the tablet, then that’s the perfect bounce point
Lawrence Pingree
the already thin phone, and providing apps that can use the phone’s resources over an encrypted session.
Separating Data Types This is an effective but questionable way to separate work and personal data. On the one hand, BlackBerry failed to sell even a million units in 2011 because it crippled its tablet. QNX limitations made it diffi cult for the company to offer a native email client for the Playbook. On the other hand,
maintaining the BlackBerry smartphone as the secure data storage mechanism and using the Playbook as little more than a connected viewer certainly walls off sensitive corporate information. Some companies are already exploring the challenge of separating personal from enterprise data on tablets in other ways. Good Technology offers secure browsing and messaging software that separates enterprise from personal data. Sooner or later, however, operating system vendors themselves would do well to support the separation of these two domains more effectively from within their own software. The challenge will be to do it while making the tablet as functional as possible. Organizations wanting to allow tablets on to their networks while maintaining security must consider which security features are most important to them. For some, encrypting specifi c data types will be crucial. For others, low-level system access to introduce custom fi rewall, VPN, and anti-malware capabilities will be more important. However, some may be unable to dictate the make or model of tablet that employees use, making mobile device management systems even more important. In the meantime, IT departments must do their best to secure these popular and attractive devices, before attackers turn their attention more readily to tablets, and put a whole new tier of software and data at risk.
January/February 2012
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