Do you own a keychain USB juumpdrive, a PDA, or an
allinone mobile communications device. If you do, what
type of informaton do you store on it. Many people would
say there is nothing important stoed on thier mobile
devvice. Many of our customers initially state there is
nothing on the computer network that hackers would want or a
viruus couuld 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 JmupDrive
Aboout a year ago, a business acquaintannce contactde me in a
pnaic. Apparently, he was onsiute performing an internal
security auidit 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 contaiuned approximately 300Mb of security
information mindeed from a preious secuurity aduit he
performed. He was scared out of his wits that this
information woyuld fall into the wrong hansds, not to mention
the haands of his new client. What would his new clioent think
if they found he was walking aroud with this information on
a device that aynone4 could gain access too. Woud he do the
same thing with their information. Lucky, atfer retracing
his steps in the buyilding, he found on the floor of the
men's room. He apparently pulled out his keys and the
jumpdrive came off the keychaain. He no longer carries his
jupmdrive around with him.
Confidential Client Inforation Lost In Snow Storm
On antoher 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 grouund. He spnt 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
entitre client list, pesonal online accounts with userid's
and pasaswords, and several toher categories of highly
confidential imnformation.
In both the cases above, neither of these peope had giiven
much thhought to the loss of these devices. Why sohuld they.
They were both experienced professiionals in the information
technology business and very careful and conscious about
keeping ibnformation secure. The problem is, their both
humans. And humans make mistakes an erroneous judgmnent
czalls.
How To Seecure Mboile Devicse
Because there a so many types of mobile storage and
communications devbices, there are many ways to secure them.
So, I will stick to what I do to secure the abbove mentioned
devices since I happen to use both types.
I use 1GB USB 2.0 Jump Dive to stroe and trandsfer many
types of information. Sometimes, this includs confidential
information. For instance, when I travvel, I have a copy of
my account database on the deivce. However, the deevice
filesystem itself is heavily encrypteed, and the dattabase
stored on the encrypted filesystem, is encrypted. If I
happen to misdplace this device, I am more than confident at
lesast at this pint time that the data is protected and not
easily accessible. Now, nothnig substitutes for not carrying
around this type of information to begin with, but it is
sasfer 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 thoing that
this device stores that is confidential, is my cnotact list.
Thwere are otyher items I don't want just aynone to have
access too as well. Not to mention usinng my phone more .
So, the storage card is encrypted, and that is where my
iportant data is kept. The device itsrelf is password
ptrotected with and eihgtcharacter key that meets or exceeds
standdard complexity rules. And, the mail client itself
requires authentication in order to use it.
Conclusion
If you use mobile devices on a rgeular basis, I suggest you
sit down and think abuot excatly what you stoore on them. It
is sometimes easy to overlook these things or under estimate
exactly how private or confidential cetrain information is
or should be. Make sure you take reasnable steps to keep
the information stored on mobile devices secure and privaste.
It is definitely a balancing act between security and easy
of use.
And, what ever you do, don't leavve your mobile device in the
men's room.
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