CIOs discuss their approach to mobile security

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Speaker: Computing is becoming increasingly mobile. More laptops are sold than desktops, that kind of thing. And field employees are constantly using smartphones or iPhones or PDAs and other portable devices. And I wondered what your security approach is to managing those portable devices that your employees use for your enterprise? And, also, what pressures there may be on you from state regulations? Massachusetts, for instance, is enacting a law that takes effect next January requiring encryption on devices to protect your corporate data and customer data. And I wondered if the panel could address those issues.

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Speaker: Well, you're the most regulated company here --

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Speaker: It is. It is, definitely.

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Speaker: And so encryption and that kind of thing's pretty important. Why don't we start with you?

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Speaker: So we -- and this is a place where, you know, there's gonna be a few young heads in the room that go, "Oh my God, you got to be kidding me." We really don't allow any device to come in and access our infrastructure. We specify devices that will be used and controlled, and it's not just because of things like Massachusetts. It has a lot to do with intellectual property. In a mobile environment where you're moving people around, I mean they could be carrying around a piece of compound information that, you know, cures Alzheimer's. And, you know, not right away, but the -- so definitely, there's two things that we always say about the mobile devices that we put in place. It's either got to be encrypted, or it's got to have a kill switch. And if it doesn't have one or the other, it doesn't make it. It doesn't make it. And so I hear constantly -- we ran a -- now, all of you won't be able to believe this because you're from California. We ran a pilot with iPhone because I just literally couldn't stand it anymore about how iPhone is so much better than the standard that we had selected, and how I'm out of touch and everything. And so we had about 80 of them, and we had over 80 percent of them turned back in by the end of the second week because we are an email and, same time, an instant messaging culture. And cracks of time and the use of the device, for the inner activity of that meant we needed to have a really strong interface and a QWERTY keyboard.

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Speaker: Yeah.

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Speaker: So guess what we use?

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Speaker: Canadian.

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Speaker: Yeah. It's a Canadian company. But -- so has to have a kill switch, or it has to be encrypted. And we just -- those are two strong things. It limits innovation and freedom, but --

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Speaker: Anything to add?

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Speaker: Well, the one kind of wild idea I came up with was we opened up Wi-Fi in our office, just free public Wi-Fi so that our suppliers could come in and work pretty easily. So I was -- you know, we were used to having an issue on my user ID and password for the day, etcetera. I'm like, "This is crazy. Let's just take it down and have a different segment." But just let them go knock themselves out. And that seems to have been working real well because a lot of people carry smartphones, and it's kind of sped things up. And I've started looking at some of the usage statistics, and it's been embraced pretty well. So it's something that we've tried in our offices. I haven't done it in our stores yet, but I may try it soon.

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Speaker: So one more comment that I see a number of companies that go multi-platform. And that raises the need for sort of single kill switch across platforms and so on. And there are companies now that are actually starting to manage this. So you have to have much more real time management of, not just your -- the security side of it, but also your calling plans and so on so that you actually have much, much tighter management of the mobile devices.

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==== Transcribed by Automatic Sync Technologies ====