In a World of Advanced Mobility, Security is Key
Assuming that Mobile Networks are Secure is Asking for Trouble
Aug 24, 2009
The great and frustrating thing about mobile communications is that there are few absolutes. Research in Motion’s Blackberry, the Apple iPhone, the Palm Pre and a large group of lesser known but still impressive devices are breaching many barriers. One of these is the increasingly fading barrier between use of mobile devices for business and consumer purposes.
People always have used their personal cell phones for business. The difference today is that the devices being used, applications being run and the networks supporting these operations are much more powerful than in the past. Consequently, the data being transmitted and stored is far more likely to be mission-critical and highly sensitive. Indeed, in many cases – particularly in the medical and financial areas -- the data has protected legal status and needs special handling.
Cellular in Business
Businesses must be aware of the need for much tighter security in their mobile endeavors. This priority extends to small- and medium-size companies that let – or even demand – that their employees use their personal mobile devices for business. It also covers big companies, usually segregated by experts into a separately labeled “enterprise” category. These companies, which have a different way of doing this, also have tended to short change mobile security.
Many of the companies at both levels are a bit unprepared. For years, the security spotlight has been on desktop PCs. Mobile devices have, for the most part, escaped serious scrutiny by the bad guys (and girls).
There were a few interrelated reasons that mobility lucked out. The PC world developed with a single highly dominant operating system – Microsoft Windows. This gave the forces of evil (less dramatically referred to as “crackers”) a juicy, single target. Conversely, there was no “monoculture” in the mobile world: A variety of operating systems, including those from Nokia, Symbian, Microsoft, Palm and others fought for shards of market share.
This means that the crackers couldn’t take on a single OS. The absence of a New York Yankees of mobile OSes dissuaded them from mounting consistent efforts. Crackers almost invariably go where the most money can be made most easily.
RIM Leads the Way
The other reason is that until relatively recently mobile devices and networks were relatively low capacity. This meant that these devices tended to be peripheral to the business in which the company was involved. The messages and data were less likely to be valuable than the data on PCs. This was a second reason that the crackers tended to demure.
That’s changing, of course. The Blackberry turned the mobile device into a central player in the corporate drama. Other device vendors and cell phone companies saw the promise and have come running with cool devices and 3G networks. The next generation of networks -- cleverly labeled 4G -- is rolling out now. That rollout will accelerate during the remainder of 2009 and really hit stride next year.
All this hardware and network capacity expansion means that the applications themselves are more likely to involve important data. For instance, a type of application companies use called customer relationship management (CRM) is knee deep (if, indeed, software applications can be imagined to have knees) in vital data and metrics. Put simply, its lifeblood is information that companies don’t want outsiders to see. A trend during the past few years is the mobilization of CRM. Clearly, protecting this data is vital.
The bottom line is that the importance of mobile security cannot be overestimated. This security takes place in three basic areas: At the device, in the network ferrying the data to and from the device and in the backend servers and databases holding the data.
Managers need to get beyond the traditional thinking that mobile communications is magically more secure than the PCs, MACs and other devices on their desks. It simply isn’t so. Hopefully, it won’t take a major data loss to convince them.
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