Corporates should devise a proper smartphone policy'

What are the best practices corporates should go for regarding smartphones security?

Smartphones have become an integral part of corporate life, providing information and access whenever and wherever required. This also, however, has led to network security concerns in the corporate world. In order to tackle this problem, the corporate should devise a proper corporate smartphone policy. Although it might be difficult to enforce the policy on personally owned devices, such policies nonetheless should be defined and communicated. Corporates should also treat all smartphones as uncontrolled endpoints and comprehensively scan all smartphones traffic to protect network resources.

With the recent Black­Berry issue and other smartphones on radar, What kind of a corporate smartphones policy should be formulated?

The corporates need to have a regimented and policy-driven approach that recognizes uncontrolled endpoints, whether or not they are company-issued. Sound corporate IT policies need to be established to govern how these smartphones are deployed and managed. The enterprises need to revert to consistent usage policies to ensure that the mobile device strategy at larger enterprises is compatible with current auditing and compliance regulations.

For scanning all smartphones traffic, what could be the hindrances and challenges for both security vendors and handset manufacturers?

IT departments should deploy a comprehensive firewall strategy to conduct deep packet inspection of all smartphones traffic traveling through the SSL VPN, effectively creating a safe VPN environment. IT administrators should ensure encryption of smartphones traffic while in transit between the device and the network gateway using SSL VPN. In addition, they should be able to decrypt smartphones traffic for comprehensive scanning using DPI SSL and re-encrypt it for subsequent transmission.

What should be corporate strategies for smartphones?

While going for smartphones, enterprises should first segment users into work styles by mobility and application requirements, and match up device choices accordingly. They should also adopt a mobile device management platform or service to help manage the use, configuration, and security of these devices. This would help enterprises in keeping the access to business resources safe.

PC Suraj

surajp@cybermedia.co.in