The use of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) tablets and other mobile computing solutions can pose a serious risk for any military or small business organization with data being stored outside of its network. Once outside the network, good data security relies partially on the underlying security of the device the user is using as their remote interface, says a Route 1 representative.
“We commend the U.S. Air Force for having the foresight to cancel their iPad2 order given the security concerns,” says Brian Brunetti, president of Route1 Inc. “BYOD (bring your own device) to work and mobile computing have the upside of reducing costs and increasing worker flexibility, but there are real and material risks if the appropriate diligence is not performed in establishing security protocols first. We strongly believe that any solution that is based on removing data from behind the organization’s firewalls has substantive risk with data integrity.
“We acknowledge that there are use cases where there is no Internet access and as such accessing data may require it go outside of the organization’s firewalls,” Brunetti adds. “In that case, an organization should consider an architected solution to manage data integrity risk. There is no such thing as perfect security, but simply managing vulnerabilities, especially obvious ones, will increase an organization’s success in protecting its most important asset: information.”
