Computing & Information Services
Securing Handheld Devices
Much important information is kept on handheld devices: cellphones, smart phones, PDAs, iPods, etc. The same guidelines for protecting confidential information apply to these devices as to personal computers. It is particularly important to protect confidential information on handhelds because they are at great risk of loss or theft.
In general:
- If you don't need to have the confidential information on the device, remove it.
- If you must have confidential information on the device, keep it encrypted or otherwise protected.
- Make sure to keep backups or any information on the device, so that if the device is lost, stolen, or damaged the data are not lost.
CIS does not support every kind of handheld device; we have specific technical recommendations only for Palm devices. If you use a different kind of handheld device you should find appropriate ways to meet these guidelines. Please contact us with any questions.
For Palm Devices
Passwords stored on your Palm PDA or smartphone should be encrypted. Secure password storage and synchronization is available with software such as Password Wallet. See the CIS general password guidelines for more information.
For Palm Treo smartphones
Many people use Treo smartphones to access to their Reed email. If the email contains confidential information, then the entire Treo must be protected. We have not identified a satisfactory way to encrypt email on the Treo; instead, we recommend Warden (Standard or Enterprise editions). This software provides ways to lock your Treo and ways to erase the data in case you lose it. The Warden documentation is very complete; if you decide to use Warden and need assistance, please contact CIS.