Mobile Security Reality Check

Gartner continues to be worried about mobile devices in the enterprise. (A little history – Gartner built a franchise on helping corporate IT deal with the “shadow IT” threat PCs represented. So high-capability, networked mobile clients look like the second coming.) From CNET this morning:

Virtualization will be a key technology to help companies beef up security on corporate mobile devices, Gartner says.

The technology is predicted to be used to break the ties between a mobile device's hardware and software so that standardized software can be downloaded on any handset or laptop.

This will allow companies to keep a tight security rein on the increasing number of different types of mobile gadgets by making sure that every corporate device adheres to the same consistent security rules, according to the analyst.

But the bad news is that such virtualization tools for mobile devices will not be around until 2012--so businesses need to start bringing in policies in the short term, Gartner said.

The really bad news is that no carrier would allow this – they tightly control what is installed on handsets that run on their networks. At least in the US. In Europe the handset market is not tightly coupled to the voice/data service markets so handset vendors have more latitude in what they can offer.

Of course smartphones (ie Windows Mobile, Palm, Symbian) provide more system-level options, but until carriers get out of the handset sales business custom image loads on handsets will remain a dream.

Technology in education (part 2)

This is not so cool. Most teachers I know are aware of this site and worried about it. Strikes me as a distraction from more legitimate ways to assess teacher (and student) performance.

Technology in education (part 1)

This is cool, although I suspect taking full advantage of technology in schools is less an issue of ideas than of infrastructure. But both help.

Building Blocks for Nokia

There are many layers to any discussion about building sophisticated mobile applications, but all roads usually lead to the primitiveness of WAP, the cost of data access, and the variability of Java as actually deployed. (I heard yesterday that the cost of porting a J2ME application to various Java implementations was greater than the cost of developing the application in the first place…)

The trick is to reach enough handsets to make an ad-supported model work at reasonable development cost and with a decent application. So Nokia’s acquisition of Twango (social networking) and Enpocket (mobile advertising) are interesting. Integration of basic social networking features into the handset – particularly given Nokia’s market share – would be a great target environment. And the ad platform is critical.

We’ll be spending a lot of time writing about social networks path to mobility, so stay tuned…

Testing...

This is a test BLOG