Why is it that Apple keeps shooting itself in the foot? The latest self-inflicted wound is described in a recent InfoWorld article. Apple has been lying about the iPhone’s ability to participate (being secure when connecting, communicating and at rest) in a secure business fashion. You may recall that the iPhone was elevated beyond a mere consumer toy when Apple announced licensing for Active Sync, which allows over-the-air synchronization with an Exchange server.
The dirty truth is that since July of 2008 the iPhone has been falsely reporting to Exchange servers that it supports on-device encryption. How do we know this? Because last week’s iPhone OS 3.1 update, that fixes a major but unacknowledged bug, has rendered most iPhones and all iPod Touches incompatible with Exchange 2007 servers, which require that on-device data be encrypted. Just imagine the thousands and thousands of users that have been pumping their corporate data through their iPhones and iPod Touches not knowing that they were compromising corporate security.
Couple this latest screw-up with the worthless PIN locking mechanism and ineffective encryption of the iPhone 3GS and it may be a very, very long time before iPhones are allowed in the enterprise environment.
- John and Mike
(703) 359-0700
digitalsamurai@senseient.com
www.senseient.com
