Smartphone Security – How Safe is Our Information?

By now, you probably know my stance on smartphone—it’s easily the greatest technology in recent history and I am counting the days (weeks, months, years) until my phone is the only device or object I need to carry with me to get through normal day-to-day activities. I want it to be my computer when I travel, my credit card when shopping or eating, my entertainment when I’m bored, even my keys when I drive or get home. All of the while, I want it to still do what a phone has always done and I want it all done safely and securely.

This is where it gets tricky. The way things stand right now, we have virtually no security on our phones, not when you compare them to how stringently we secure our home and office networks and computers. The October 6 issue of Information Week featured a cover boasting smartphones as “your next computer” and had two smartphone-centric articles—one about smartphone adoption among businesses and another about smartphone security. The first article focused on applications necessary to make a device an acceptable alternative to notebooks, as well as the security risks and hurtles that IT departments face when “doing business” on a smartphone. The second article, a part of a Rolling Review series, goes more in depth into the specific problems that can be expected from smartphones’ lack of security and ways IT departments can begin to combat the impending problems.

If a phone is going to be the all-in-one device I want it to be, it’s going to have to do its best to guarantee my work and personal life are safe from the types of predators we’ve seen since information exchange over the Internet became popular. We’ll have to keep our eye on this Rolling Review as well as those who are controlling the security to ensure our safety. I’m not resting until I’m driving along in my phone-igniting car and using voice-recognition software on my phone to create a new blog entry, which will be posted to the Internet via the worldwide wireless networks available. Hey, it’ll happen.