Today I saw this research about security and PDAs.

It seems that this is a big blind spot for the PDA users and IT Managers. This is not the first time I heard this warning; a month ago I attended a meeting about “Mobility and Security” and it addressed this problem, also.

The problem is that people put pretty much everything on these devices without any encryption whatsoever. So you can find credit card info, passwords, and other important documents without much effort at all.

Users just don’t understand the possible security threat that is knocking on their door.

Here I have some statistics to prove the point:

• Three out of the ten PDA users are putting classified information on thier PDAs.

• 81% contain this classified info without any encryption.
• 22% lost thier device.
• 40% did not go to the police to report the loss.

In my opinion this is something, especially for IT Managers, that should be considered. I mean if you have people walking around with classified documents on their PDAs and you consider that 22% are losing their PDAs while they are traveling, you have a company disaster on your hands.

[John van Leeuwen]

[tags]mobility,pda security,it security,classified document,john van leeuwen[/tags]