How do you manage smartphones?

They are everywhere these days. And not just smartphones but tablets and other mobile devices. Whatever flavour they are, they all have the ability to access and store all manner of information. Email and calendar sure but in some cases they will have access to your CRM, your terminal server and even files from your network. So how do you manage this? Or do you manage this?

From a business point of view, if a member of staff comes in on Monday with a new iPhone and wants to read their email on it, it is probably seen as a positive thing. So you give them the details they need and they start syncing.

From that point on, you need to at least have a policy telling your staff what they can and can’t do - what information should they have on the device, force secure passwords, force entry of a PIN or password when the device is unattended, etc. You should also have procedures in place to remote wipe a device to protect your IP. Blackberry has had remote wipe functionality for a long time through BES and the iPhone has had this since version 3. This at least gives you the ability to remove data from a lost or ‘rogue’ device. BES also gives you a certain amount of control over what a user can do with the device, as can third-party tools such as Good Mobile.

You are very protective of the data you store on your computer systems, so shouldn’t this protection extend to your mobile devices? These devices are so powerful these days that they really are just another part of your network and should be treated as such.