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Matt Rogish
Asked: 2009-08-21 21:09:17 +0800 CST

iPhone Security for Businesses

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After much negotiation with AT&T Business (and tremendous pressure from dissatisfied BB users) we recently switched from BlackBerries to the ubiquitous iPhone. How best can we secure the data on the iPhones to help prevent a mis-placed phone from being a major problem?

I know there's the Mobile Me service that can remotely wipe the phones, but setting up and managing dozens of accounts (and PAYING for them) is time consuming, costly and not easily centrally managed.

Are there apps out there, or some other way, to help increase iPhone security when used in a business setting? Remote wipe, encryption, etc.

Thanks!!

security

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    I've found the iPhone implementation for business to be pretty good documented on the Apple site: http://www.apple.com/iphone/business/integration/

    With the iPhone configuration utility, you can create profiles which help you standardize the installs. I'd recommend you start documenting your installs/setups and find what the best configuration will be for your business.

    For remote wipe, if you are an MS shop and use Exchange, then you're pretty much set as exchange gives you this ability if you have an account created on the phone.

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  2. If you have Exchange 2007 (or 2010 when released) you can remotely wipe any device that is still setup to talk directly to the Exchange server (iPhone, Windows Mobile, etc).

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  3. we're a blackberry shop here at the moment, and l0c0b0x is right.

    in regards to remote wiping, I believe even if you're using 2003 server, it works via the activesync service.

    provisioning is a heck of a lot easier in my opinion, as you can set up your security profile, host it on a webserver (you need to add a MIME type), browse to it on the iphone and it applies whatever restrictions you set.

    update as needed, send an email, people click link. insta-update.

    we had a spare iphone that we used for testing from the CEO :)

    beats all the annoying blackberry licences, 'bolt ons' and stuff you need to do.

    I wouldn't use mobileme, your exchange server will do all that stuff.

    data plan required, that's it. you can even turn off youtube if somebody gets tap happy with it via the security settings :)

    only thing I'm not happy with is that (at least in my version of iphone config util, was in 2.0) you couldn't specify authorised applications.

    it was all apps, or no apps.

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