Getting nervous about notebook/handheld security

By John Cox, NetworkWorld.com, 11/24/03

After sitting through some Comdex sessions on network-based security threats to corporate productivity and data, I don't think I'll look at my Windows 95 Compaq notebook the same way again.

Networks have become increasingly important to organizations, even though we're still far from the "digital nervous system" that Bill Gates talked about in one of his Comdex keynotes a few years ago. Networked digital systems are, however, making network executives increasingly nervous.

Nets are speeding the spread of computer worms, viruses and trojan horses. Early WLAN adopters, such as universities, are finding that wireless nets are a blazingly fast medium for distributing these threats.

Reporters don't usually carry on their notebooks critical customer data, like that found in the now notorious RIM Blackberry e-mail device that a Morgan Stanley executive sold on eBay when he upgraded to a new one. But as I look at the notebook I'm typing on, I realize I'm carrying around corporate e-mail addresses, company memos marked "confidential" about our quarterly and yearly financial results, benefits information concerning me and my family, and information about our headquarters network, including the setup to access it via dialup or Ethernet. And all of this data is unprotected.

The increasing sophistication of the handheld devices we use, the constant emphasis on making them easier to use so that we need know less about them in order to use them, makes us increasingly vulnerable to those who do know about them.

We've reached a point where electronic "joke" e-mails have long ceased to be funny to network and business executives who can now quantify the productivity hit their companies suffer from these.

Listening to the growing number of ways in which corporate handheld devices can be compromised, I began to think that it's only a matter of time before revenge, curiosity, malice, and greed lead to concerted, systematic efforts to inflict the maximum possible damage to a company's operation.

How does your company secure the handheld devices used by field workers, telecommuters, executives, sales staff and so many others? Are you finding handheld and wireless incidents on the rise? What kinds of responses is your company making?

Are you nervous yet?

Back to Wireless Notes

Comments

Post a comment

Name:


E-mail address:


URL:


Comments:


Remember info?