ITNews

The Gartner, Inc posting Gartner Changes Its Enterprise iPhone Recommendation; It’s Ready for Business reverses its initial dis of the iPhone over security issues.

(Credit: Apple)

“In its initial release, the iPhone was, with few exceptions, an Internet tablet with browser-based applications as its main offering, however, the release of firmware 2.0 changes that, enabling enterprises to develop local code and create applications that do not depend on network capabilities,” Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney said in a statement. “The iPhone will thus match up initially in several segments against its main smartphone competitors — BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Symbian Series 60.”

“By licensing Exchange ActiveSync and exposing its basic security policies, enterprises can provide sufficient security for iPhone during Exchange personal information manager (PIM) and e-mail use,” Mr. Dulaney said. “This will open up a huge market for the iPhone, which previously had been stymied by a lack of basic business security and application functionality. However, Apple must widen distribution and of course deliver what they have promised.”

Managing such a disruptive technology as the iPhone will be challenging for IT.

…John

The Codenomicon white paper Wireless Security: Past, Present and Future discusses the state and future of Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and WiMAX security.

The results are not encouraging. Vulnerabilities were found in 90% of the tested devices.

Despite boasts of hardened security measures, security researchers and black-hat hackers keep humiliating vendors. Security assessment of software by source code auditing is expensive and laborious. There are only a few methods for security analysis without access to the source code, and they are usually limited in scope. This may be one reason why many major software vendors have been stuck randomly fixing vulnerabilities that have been found and providing countless patches to their clients to keep the systems protected.

I guess the moral of this tale is be aware of what you hook up with.

…John