Survey: iPhone Poses Security Risk

"We haven't seen any new enterprise iPhone security features from Apple since the summer of 2009."

March 26, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO - Harsh words for Apple. According to a recent nCircle survey, iPhones present the greatest security risk to the smartphone enterprise, according to the network security and compliance-auditing firm.

"The general consensus is that Apple continues to do only the absolute minimum to address enterprise security and supportability requirements," noted Andrew Storms, director of security operations for nCircle. "We haven't seen any new enterprise iPhone security features from Apple since the summer of 2009 when they introduced their new hardware level encryption, which was almost immediately subverted. This is not the kind of behavior security professionals want to see in vendors."

According to survey respondents:

  • 57% believe that the iPhone carries the greatest security risk
  • 39% ranked Google Android as presenting the highest risk
  • 28% named Blackberry the riskiest
  • 13% ranked Nokia as having the highest risk
  • 58% of respondents have a corporate smartphone security policy in place; 65% of enterprises with a smartphone security policy enforce it

Storms added: "The good news from this survey is that a greater number of companies are starting to understand the security ramifications of mobile devices. It is encouraging that a majority of companies have a smartphone security policy and enforce it."

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