iPad / iPhone in Business

[Rivanov]

More and more we get questions from our customers asking for implementation of the iPhone and iPad in their business. Especially the safety of this is an important issue.
Mail, contacts and calendar are all very easy to sync (Exchange, etc.) But each person will have important data on their device and that's not always desirable.

With Mobile Device Manager (MDM) you can centrally manage the devices and ensure that people only have the data on their device if they are inside the building. Once they walk out then the data will erased from their device. Very safe course, but not very useful. Because you want to have your mail/calendar on your device when your on the road!

This is a discussion point, how do you separate your business and private data/content on you iPad / iPhone.
Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is very hot and I wonder who has practical experience with this "problem" and want to share this experience.

 

[ChristianVirtual]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

Of course you need to activate device encryption and some basic config profiles like longer password with automatic wipe after a defined number of try. Additionally you can setup VPN in way that you can only access intranet.
At least my company did that. When I'm per PKI on internet I can open Internet. A bit painful but ok.
Also helpful on iPad is Citrix or remote desktops; here you can secure the data a bit more so they don't leave the building as you asked for.
You could even use native iPad applications and store in WebDAV folders or Sharepoint.
I actually also have it only since four weeks end start to explore more details.

 

[Bernard SG]

It's an usual attitude for enterprise IT guys to worry about things before they happen. However, as far as I know, there hasn't been any reported occurrence of an iPhone or iPad being ACTUALLY hacked in. Sure some intellectual wamkers find exploits that are usually immediately patched by Apple.
IMO an I-device is at least 10 times more secure than a windows laptop.