Securing the PDA
Securing PDAs should be the same as securing any other device. But some companies still don't see them as worth worrying about.
By Bryan Betts,
Techworld


The PDA is replacing the filing cabinet for many users, says Magnus Ahlberg, managing director of Pointsec Mobile Technologies. He adds that they no longer leave their national insurance and bank details at home, but carry them around, blissfully unaware of what might happen if this information is lost and not adequately protected.

Symantec Protects Handhelds Against Viruses
August 25, 2003 (12:18 a.m. EST)
By Gregg Keizer, TechWeb News

Symantec on Monday announced an anti-virus solution for Palm OS- and PocketPC-powered handhelds that provides both real-time and on-demand scanning against viruses, worms, and other malicious code.
The AntiVirus for Handhelds line comes in editions for both consumers and the enterprise, said senior product manager Laura Garcia-Manrique.

Intranet Journal Staff
4/07/2003

Corporate information technology users are increasingly relying on personal data assistants (PDAs) to check e-mail, surf the Web, and a variety of other tasks. When you use PDAs for online tasks they become just as vulnerable as desktop systems to viruses, mobile code exploits, and a variety of other threats. What should organizations do to make keep their PDA users safe from the threats of the Internet?

PDAs (personal digital assistants), pocket-sized diaries that are becoming increasingly more powerful, can represent a serious threat to corporate security.

As PDAs become smaller and their capabilities increase, these devices are becoming more popular in corporate environments, especially among managerial staff. This, combined with the ease with which data can be transmitted from a computer to these devices, means that the amount of sensitive information stored on them has also increased significantly. And as PDAs are now smaller than ever, the risk of them (and therefore critical data) being lost or stolen is now greater than ever.

haiku writes "The Sony Clié was as good a smoking gun as investigators could get in
a white-collar crime.


When the police in San Jose, Calif., broke up an identity-theft crime
ring two weeks ago, they used search warrants to seize and examine the
hand-held organizers of the suspects, including that of the man the
police said had been the ringleader, Julian Torres, 21.


Stored on Mr. Torres's Clié, investigators said, were the names of
more than 20 victims along with their Social Security, bank account
and credit card numbers and other personal information. Mr. Torres's
To-Do list included tasks like picking up materials at the local
office supply store to make fake checks, the police said. E-mail
messages contained confirmations of transfers from victims' bank
accounts. He had even used the Clié's digital camera to take pictures
of his partners in crime. It was hard for Mr. Torres to deny the Clié
was his, the police said, given that he had entered his parents' phone
numbers under Dad and Mom. "

The June issue of What Mobile magazine reveals a security flaw in the supposedly integrated Phone Edition of the Pocket PC operating system.

Mobile phones offer protection against unauthorized use in the form of a PIN that has to be typed in to make a call. Pocket PC Phone Edition implements this with a check box to turn the PIN on and off. When you select the phone dialer with the PIN enabled the dialer asks you to enter the PIN before it will go any further, if however you then select the browser and start a GPRS browse session it will connect (although it shouldn't). If you then run another instance of the dialer you can make voice calls.

Microsoft's mantra is that "Adding wireless capabilities is fine, but integrating them is better. We'll point out how this integration plays out as we step through the new features of Pocket PC 2002 Phone Edition".