Apple keep on marketing the iPhone as an enterprise friendly alternative to the Blackberry and other business phones with features such as encryption and remote data destruction.

Despite ongoing concern that the iPhone is just not enterprise ready hundreds of companies and government organisations have already deployed the device amongst their workforce.

It turns out that may have been a very bad move. Not only can the encryption on an iphone 3GS be broken within minutes if an employees device is lost or stolen but “root kits” can also be deployed on a device allowing anyone in the world to connect to a device and do things such as copy data from a corporate network, intercept emails and even listen in to conversations and take photos or record video.

Someone physically stealing your phone, installing malicious software and returning your phone may seem far fetched but it seems there’s even a threat from Apple and the app store itself.

The iPhone does not have a security model like many other phones when it comes to applications. The only security put in place is the iTunes review process which only looks at what the app does. A malicious app could easily be written that gets past this gatekeeper by looking innocent. Fart app anyone? Once installed on your iphone it has access to everything. Your personal data, your camera, in fact everything any other app can do can be done. All without your approval.

If you’re thinking of using the iPhone as a business tool, or even a serious life management tool. Think twice.

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This entry was posted on Monday, July 27th, 2009 at 5:13 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.