{"id":34,"date":"2010-06-06T20:12:42","date_gmt":"2010-06-06T10:12:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.wingsofhermes.org\/?p=34"},"modified":"2010-06-06T20:12:44","modified_gmt":"2010-06-06T10:12:44","slug":"ipad-security-good-or-bad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.wingsofhermes.org\/?p=34","title":{"rendered":"iPad &#8211; Security good or bad?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"clear: both\">Isn&#8217;t the iPad phenomenon interesting! I&#8217;m firmly in the camp that it&#8217;s a &#8220;good thing&#8221;, and having played with one I think it&#8217;s wrong to compare it with a laptop &#8211; the whole concept is different. It&#8217;s not about having a small form factor fully functional computer &#8211; it&#8217;s about having a small device that is instant on and gives you access to web\/cloud services and media.<\/p>\n<p style=\"clear: both\">\n<div>I find the instant on is important. In the house I tend to avoid turning on the computer if I have to look up something quickly. It&#8217;s too much hassle. The iPad\/iPhone (or similar devices) are instant on &#8211; net access conveniently and quickly.<\/div>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"clear: both\">\n<div>From a security perspective I find the iPad\/iPhone fascinating. On one hand the in built security functions are ordinary. Device lock is a 4 digit PIN, there is no automatic encryption of flash and if you&#8217;ve tried to program one (I have) things like the cryptographic libraries are somewhat hard to find any information on.<\/div>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"clear: both\">\n<div>On the other hand, the construction of the application environment is great. I love the fact that each application is sandboxed from the others. I think in version 4 of the OS there will be shared data of some kind &#8211; but I&#8217;ve not got my head around that yet. It starts to make the perfect access device.<\/div>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"clear: both\">\n<div>I&#8217;m using my iPhone now for all my banking needs. Why?<\/div>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"clear: both\">\n<div>\n<ul style=\"clear: both\">\n<li>The only virus I&#8217;ve seen was the the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/news\/stories\/2009\/11\/09\/2737673.htm\" title=\"ABC News - Australian admits creating first iPhone virus\" target=\"_blank\">Rick Astley<\/a> concept virus. I&#8217;m sure there will be others, but at the moment there is less of a focus on the iPhone for malware. (And I&#8217;m not planning to jailbreak any time soon.)<\/li>\n<li>The sandbox environment makes it less likely a badly behaved\/insecure application can undermine the entire phone. Not by any means infallible, but not a bad start.<\/li>\n<li>The device is simpler than a computer running a full operating system. Simpler = less to go wrong = easier to secure.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So on one hand you have a device that has little in the way of enterprise security features you might expect in a laptop (full disk encryption, password management etc.). But on the other you have a simple device that for accessing cloud or web type services &#8211; <strong>where the data is not stored on the device<\/strong> &#8211; which is perfect.<\/div>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"clear: both\">\n<div>So all in all &#8211; I&#8217;m in favour. I like the whole concept and I think the more iPad like devices we see, the better it&#8217;s going to be for security &#8211; with the caveat that the device is about access not storage. So to sum it up:<\/div>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"clear: both\">\n<div>\n<ul style=\"clear: both\">\n<li>If your need is <strong>access<\/strong> to sensitive information\/data\/applications without local data &#8211; the iPad is a great device.<\/li>\n<li>If your need is <strong>storage and local handling<\/strong> of sensitive data\/applications &#8211; stick with a laptop for now!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"clear: both\">\n<div><\/div>\n<\/p>\n<p><br class=\"final-break\" style=\"clear: both\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Isn&#8217;t the iPad phenomenon interesting! I&#8217;m firmly in the camp that it&#8217;s a &#8220;good thing&#8221;, and having played with one I think it&#8217;s wrong to compare it with a laptop &#8211; the whole concept is different. It&#8217;s not about having a small form factor fully functional computer &#8211; it&#8217;s about having a small device that&hellip; <span class=\"clear\"><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.wingsofhermes.org\/?p=34\" class=\"more-link read-more\" rel=\"bookmark\">Continue Reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">iPad &#8211; Security good or bad?<\/span><i class=\"fa fa-arrow-right\"><\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pX0hd-y","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wingsofhermes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wingsofhermes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wingsofhermes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wingsofhermes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wingsofhermes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wingsofhermes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wingsofhermes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions\/35"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wingsofhermes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wingsofhermes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wingsofhermes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}