iPhone a security nightmare, but blocking it is pointless: RSA

Angus Kidman
Tuesday, 20 October 2009 16:13

Business IT - Security

Smart phones such as the iPhone represent a major security risk but there's little point in organisations trying to ban or regulate them, according to security solutions developer RSA.


Speaking at the opening keynote for RSA Conference Europe, RSA senior vice president Chris Young said that while trying to impose policies to control the use of devices like the iPhone or BlackBerry was common, it was rarely if ever a successful strategy.

"Trying to prevent these technologies is a surefire way for security organisations to become irrelevant," he told attendees at the event, one of two major global conferences for the EMC-owned security provider. "Security teams who try to do so will likely be steamrolled in their organisations."

The security landscape has changed dramatically in the last five years, RSA executive vice president Art Coviello noted. "We didn't even see criminal attacks in reality until 2003 and 2004 with the emergence of phishing and pharming. None of the infrastructure created prior to then even anticipated that these attacks would come our way."

That rapid pace of change meant that the average technology user had little chance of realising the true scale of potential threats, Coviello said. "While technology and info have evolved and grown dramatically over the last 100 years, people have evolved at a much slower pace, and our ability to deal with the complexity foisted on us is limited."

Young made the same point. "Security needs to be seamless and transparent to the users and systems it's designed to protect. People simply cannot keep up."