Security Consultant Says 2012 Is A Mobile Year

TROY -- Ask Steve Barone, CEO of Troy tech security consultants Creative Breakthroughs Inc., what the top issues of 2012 are, and he might as well start singing the old Who song "Going Mobile."

"Most of what's going to happen in 2012, all the problems we've seen early on, are all tied in to how people are going to integrate different mobile technologies into the company network," Barone said. "I see signs all over the place, BYOD, 'bring your own device' -- everybody wants to bring their own devices into the corporate network. How do you address six million iPads being sold at Christmas time and everybody wanting to get email on them?"

Cautiously, as it turns out. And, Barone said, "every company is going to have a different answer. We do a mobile assessment. But for people from 200-person law firms to the biggest of the biggest enterprise, there's a different best line of defense for everybody."

It might be as simple as making sure everyone's on a relatively secure Web email client. It might be as complicated as designing separate boot-up systems for mobile devices if the user wants to use them to get into a corporate network, systems that restrict security to some corporate assets.

Barone said that "90 percent of companies don't have a firm mobile strategy yet. There are Web pages that snap some things down. Most companies run on Exchange, so you can run some form of client. The problem is, that client is now on an iPad, and that iPad doesn't have a lot of corporate software available to it that laptops do."

Companies may restrict the ability of employees to download sensitive documents onto thumb drives. But Barone noted that "a ton of email (systems) have unlimited access to attachments. Companies may say you can't copy documents, but you can attach them to an email."

For more information, visit Creative Breakthroughs at www.cbihome.com.

Barone said Creative Breakthroughs is up to 55 employees, and is "hiring what we call consultants and senior consultants, which means people with pretty much any experience in computer security." The company has also set up internship programs with Oakland University and Eastern Michigan University.