How Secure Is Your Mobile Device?...

Is Your Mobile Device Secure

Is Your Mobile Device Secure

Do you own a keychain USB jumpdrive, a PDA, or an

allinone mobile communications device. If you do, what

type of information do you store on it. Many people would

say there is nothing important stored on their mobile

device. Many of our customers initially state there is

nothing on the computer network that hackers would want or a

virus could irreparably damage.

I want to start out this article with a couple reallife

stories about why it is so important to make sure your

mobile devices are secure.

Panic Over Lost JumpDrive

About a year ago, a business acquaintance contacted me in a

panic. Apparently, he was onsite performing an internal

security audit for a rather large company, and had lost or

misplaced his keychain USB JumpDrive. At first, I was not

sure of why he was in such a panic. That is, until he told

me the drive contained approximately 300Mb of security

information minded from a previous security audit he

performed. He was scared out of his wits that this

information would fall into the wrong hands, not to mention

the hands of his new client. What would his new client think

if they found he was walking around with this information on

a device that anyone4 could gain access too. Would he do the

same thing with their information. Lucky, after retracing

his steps in the building, he found on the floor of the

men's room. He apparently pulled out his keys and the

jumpdrive came off the keychain. He no longer carries his

jumpdrive around with him.

Confidential Client Information Lost In Snow Storm

On another occasion, someone quite close to me, dropped his

Toshiba PDA somewhere between his car and food store. Not to

big of a deal, except for the fact that there was about one

foot of snow on the ground. He spent the next three hours

drudging through the snow looking for the PDA. Besides the

fact that it was not an inexpensive PDA, it contained his

entire client list, personal online accounts with userid's

and passwords, and several other categories of highly

confidential information.

In both the cases above, neither of these people had given

much thought to the loss of these devices. Why should they.

They were both experienced professionals in the information

technology business and very careful and conscious about

keeping information secure. The problem is, their both

humans. And humans make mistakes an erroneous judgment

calls.

How To Secure Mobile Devices

Because there a so many types of mobile storage and

communications devices, there are many ways to secure them.

So, I will stick to what I do to secure the above mentioned

devices since I happen to use both types.

I use 1GB USB 2.0 Jump Drive to store and transfer many

types of information. Sometimes, this includes confidential

information. For instance, when I travel, I have a copy of

my account database on the device. However, the device

filesystem itself is heavily encrypted, and the database

stored on the encrypted filesystem, is encrypted. If I

happen to misplace this device, I am more than confident at

least at this point time that the data is protected and not

easily accessible. Now, nothing substitutes for not carrying

around this type of information to begin with, but it is

safer than carrying around a printout of the excel

spreadsheet you keep you passwords in.

As far mobile communications. I don't know what I would do

without my mobile phone. It has replaced my PDA, has

unlimited internet access, a VPN client so I can retrieve my

mail without having to use a separate service more , a

1GB storage card, camera and so on. The primary thing that

this device stores that is confidential, is my contact list.

There are other items I don't want just anyone to have

access too as well. Not to mention using my phone more .

So, the storage card is encrypted, and that is where my

important data is kept. The device itself is password

protected with and eightcharacter key that meets or exceeds

standard complexity rules. And, the mail client itself

requires authentication in order to use it.

Conclusion

If you use mobile devices on a regular basis, I suggest you

sit down and think about exactly what you store on them. It

is sometimes easy to overlook these things or under estimate

exactly how private or confidential certain information is

or should be. Make sure you take reasonable steps to keep

the information stored on mobile devices secure and private.

It is definitely a balancing act between security and easy

of use.

And, what ever you do, don't leave your mobile device in the

men's room.

by: Shivk

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