5/26/05

A Short Review of PDA Defense

At a recent Institute for Applied Network Security Forum, I handed my PDA to my friend and colleague, Robin Roberts of Cisco, to show her some family photos.

“You don’t use an encryption program?” she asked. I just looked at her sheepishly. “PDA Defense,” she said.

So, I went and downloaded a trial version of PDA Defense.

PDA Defense provides access control for your PDA (in my case, a Palm Computer®), as well as strong encryption to protect. You can control what files or applications are encrypted (my calendar, contacts, and email, yes; my Bible and photos, no). You can set what applications or ata bases get wiped (destroyed) if there are too many wrong password attempts, as well as to destroy all records if there are too many at initial “login.” (“That is just a loaded gun aimed at my head,” Robin said.)

It also allows you to set a password an any and all application launches. So, for example, if my company policy was to password protect my corporate email records on my PDA with a password, I’d need a password to access my PDA, and would have to provide it again to get at my email.

It works, it is useable, and fairly painless. Does your organization have a policy that covers the security of PDAs

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