Wireless customers share security strategies

To standardize or not on handheld devices?

CHICAGO — Network professionals at Globalcomm 2006 conference said they are exploiting the latest wireless and mobile technologies to get employees closer to customers and increase productivity, but are constantly facing new security challenges in doing so.

“You can connect more, but guess what? More direct attacks,” said Andy Farkas, assistant vice president of emerging technologies at Capmark Financial Group, the large, Horsham, Pa.-based mortgage servicing company. “More malware, more software patching [which] costs more money. So the more we give our employees to connect, the more vulnerabilities we’re going to have to face.”

Farkas delivered a keynote address at Globalcomm, a big new telecom industry show that grew out of the defunct Supercomm event. In addition to highlighting the latest mobile computing trends, the show featured announcements and demos from telecom service and equipment providers such as AT&T, which outlined plans to upgrade its MPLS backbone to 40Gbps speeds this summer.

In his address, Farkas described his company’s extensive use of wireless. Formerly known as GMAC Commercial Mortgage, Capmark has 3,000 employees in 100 offices in nine countries. The company has a campus Wi-Fi mesh network for data and voice, wireless video surveillance, point-to-point wireless between buildings for disaster recovery, and a mix of cellular technologies for WAN applications.

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CHICAGO — Network professionals at Globalcomm 2006 conference said they are exploiting the latest wireless and mobile technologies to get employees closer to customers and increase productivity, but are constantly facing new security challenges in doing so.

“You can connect more, but guess what? More direct attacks,” said Andy Farkas, assistant vice president of emerging technologies at Capmark Financial Group, the large, Horsham, Pa.-based mortgage servicing company. “More malware, more software patching [which] costs more money. So the more we give our employees to connect, the more vulnerabilities we’re going to have to face.”

Farkas delivered a keynote address at Globalcomm, a big new telecom industry show that grew out of the defunct Supercomm event. In addition to highlighting the latest mobile computing trends, the show featured announcements and demos from telecom service and equipment providers such as AT&T, which outlined plans to upgrade its MPLS backbone to 40Gbps speeds this summer.

In his address, Farkas described his company’s extensive use of wireless. Formerly known as GMAC Commercial Mortgage, Capmark has 3,000 employees in 100 offices in nine countries. The company has a campus Wi-Fi mesh network for data and voice, wireless video surveillance, point-to-point wireless between buildings for disaster recovery, and a mix of cellular technologies for WAN applications.

Employees use BlackBerry, Palm, Audiovox and Imate handheld devices to enter and retrieve loan information in back-office systems in Horsham through a Web-based portal written in Microsoft’s .Net language. Implementing and supporting a mix of devices makes the IT department’s job harder, but Farkas said that needs to be balanced with letting other employees do their jobs more effectively. “I just can’t give one device and say, ‘Everybody use the same thing,’ because they have different levels of responsibility,” he said.

Farkas said Microsoft’s security features pack and Research In Motion’s BlackBerry Enterprise Server lets devices be managed by policy, locked down, password-protected and cleared of sensitive data if they are lost. “We can remotely wipe them if somebody calls up and says, ‘I left my phone in the cab,’” he said.

The increasingly mobile network has led to more malicious attacks, though damage from such attacks has been kept to a minimum through proactive measures, Farkas said. “We’ve employed things where if people are coming into our networks that we’re checking anti-virus levels and firewalls and patching levels,” he said. “We’re making sure those things are turned on so we can protect our networks.”

Protection was one reason Whirlpool of Benton Harbor, Mich., decided to standardize on RIM’s BlackBerry as its handheld mobile platform. Fewer than 25% of Whirlpool’s worldwide workforce of 88,000 are mobile; but that will increase dramatically over the next 24 to 30 months, said Rick Perrotta, director of global network engineering and services for the home appliance manufacturer.