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Looking back to March 26th 1999, the entire windows community was caught unawares by an email based virus called W97M/Melissa – Whilst not particularly malicious in intent, it caused the worlds messaging servers to increase traffic exponentially, and briefly crippled many multi-national corporations such as Microsoft and Intel, who were forced to take evasive measures by disconnecting corporate servers from the internet. At this point I was employed as a consultant, and received a frantic call from our IS Manager. “Sorry, we have a major issue with our email servers here, and you will have to drive back to the office to get an antivirus patch”. Laptop in the car, 120 Miles later, I was back in touch with the world, and more importantly, my clients. A subsequent IT review determined the requirement for Antivirus, Patch and Device Management. This was implemented, and it never became an issue again. Rolling forward 9 years to 2008, here I am with my PDA. I don’t need my laptop for my day to day work, but I keep it for heavyweight use like document creation. My current device has 2GB of data storage, lots of customer information and I really would be as lost without it as I was without my laptop back in 1999. It is generally agreed that machines need local protection against malicious code, and most organisations have implemented a security strategy including Firewall, Antivirus and Patch management. Everywhere that is, except for mobile data devices. These devices have increasing amounts of local data storage, are small enough to be misplaced, lost or stolen. In addition, to ensure sales teams and frontline workers reactivity, these devices contain customer details, personal contacts and information that the organisation has a duty of care over. If this information is lost or stolen, it can become at best, embarrassing for the organisation, at worst can result in very costly legal action. Speaking recently at the opening day of the 2008 Gartner IT Security Summit in London, Gartner analyst John Girard stated “increased standardization across smart phones and mobile devices was making life easier for the bad guys. The more your phone gets like a PC, the more it can host malicious code or have its function altered by someone else." Adding that, “scam emails that form the basis of phishing attacks were likely to become more common on mobile platforms next year.” Gartner advises businesses to adopt device encryption and access controls, as well as insisting on a minimum set of security specifications in order to minimize possible risks. Justyn Roberts ManageMyMobile.com
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