Kevin Gilbert
Marketing data, including customer and sales information, is some of the most valuable information within an organization. It is paramount that this information remain secured from tampering and theft. Companies that have experienced data loss have experienced large fines, loss of reputation, and some have gone out of business. In this series of short articles, we’ll provide tips for securing your data on various devices and at data connection touch points. In this post, we’ve provided 4 best practices to secure your cell phone or mobile device.
CELL PHONES
Today’s business cell phones are more than just phones, they are smart phones. Whether you use an iPhone, Droid, Blackberry, or other smart phone for business, you probably have corporate email, contacts, and other data on the phone. Essentially, cell phones are becoming smaller versions of our laptops and have unique security concerns. The following are some essentials for maintaining cell phone security:
- Have a policy requiring corporate-owned cell phones. Without this policy, if an employee leaves you may have no authority to assure they remove all corporate data from their personally owned cell phone.
- Secure all phones with a password. Every time the phone is unholstered or woken, it should prompt for a password. This will prevent a non-employee or passer-by from stealing a phone and using it.
- Place an idle time-out on phones. If the phone isn’t used for a period of time, it should black out and require a password. If a phone is left someplace and forgotten, an idle time-out will prevent a non-employee or passer-by from using it.
- Make sure you have the ability to remotely remove data from the phone. Blackberry BES, for example, will allow you to remove all email and contacts from a stolen phone.
There are many things that can be done to keep data secure. In this post, I have touched on some of the most common. By implementing these best practices, you can help to assure that valuable data does not fall into the wrong hands.
About the Author:
Kevin Gilbert is the Technology Manager at SIGMA Marketing Group. Kevin headed the data center virtualization project for four years and is a VMWare Certified Professional (VCP). Connect with Kevin on .
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