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Mobile platforms bring unique security challenges

IT must step up to the security issues of mobile computing. Laptops and high-end smartphones in particular are a major target for theft, and while most thieves are just after the device, which they wipe clean and fence, some may be sophisticated enough to realize that the information on them, and the access to corporate information through them, is often much more valuable to competitors than the phone itself. Wherever possible users should be discouraged from saving sensitive information on laptop hard drives and required instead to access that information only through secure network connections. Good password practices, including changing passwords periodically, should be enforced. Every mobile employee should have an electronic wallet on his device where he can store all his passwords under strong encryption, giving him only one password that he needs to remember and eliminating the common practice of jotting passwords down on a slip of paper kept in the wallet or of using obvious passwords such as a child's birth date. And devices themselves should be equipped with a strong, password-activated locking system that encrypts all sensitive data. Really sensitive data should be double encrypted – once in the application and a second time by the device locking system. Of course none of this is perfect, but if it becomes more expensive to crack the codes than the information is worth, then the information on the device, if not the device itself, can be deemed reasonably secure.

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Featured Case Study

Financial giant goes green

The corporate IT group of a very large, worldwide financial organization with 100,000 employees, has initiated an ongoing “greening” process. This is focused largely on reducing energy use both to decrease the corporation's carbon footprint while creating a net savings in operational costs over the lifetime of new, more energy-efficient equipment, including new storage systems.

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Featured How-To Note

Planning a Green Storage Initiative

Fluctuating energy prices have heightened electricity and energy consumption as a major issue within the technology community. IT is a significant consumer of energy and IT energy costs have been rising disproportionately because of continued investment in denser IT equipment. Estimates from the EPA and others indicate that IT will account for 3% of energy consumption by 2012.

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