Smartphone usuage at work - Does your company allow it?

[Guest TonyL]

Smartphone usage at work - Does your company allow it?

I'm seeking a general census of opinion on how many people are allowed to connect and synchronise their smartphones at work. Initial concerns was the vulnerability of GPRS. After extensive research I've just about exhausted every avenue on GPRS and cant find anything that would make me concerned.

My other thoughts was just data usage and users being able to use their smartphone as a means to take data away from the office. Bearing in mind that we already allow Ipaq'a etc and we have policies in place already stating that they can use them for synching calendar and contacts only - nothing else. i.e. Data transfer is prohibited.

I'm looking at this from a banking perspective - anyone out there in a bank and allowed to use their phones? Any feed back would be greatly appreciated.

[Guest Disco Stu]

I'm an accountant in private practise and I don't think my boss would understand the implications, although I have no need to take office data onto my phone anyway. The situation would surely be covered by the usual office policies on client confidentiality etc.

I've never even tried to synch contacts and calender. My office Outlook has personal and business contacts categories and I was worried about which of them would be synched. Just never thought it would be all that useful.

Doesn't really answer your questions though..

[Guest jmechan]

I work in IT support at a bank and the policy here is that they don't allow any 'telephone' devices to sync. Which is stupid, cos the device of choice is the Blackberry, which they do allow to sync. Smartphones, t6x phones, p800s are all forbidden.

Also, issues of data transfer tend to be fairly irrelevant unless all outgoing email is tracked as well.

Of course I've hacked the restrictions so I can sync my mpx200 here. I really can't see anything to worry about here. For someone to use GPRS to attempt to steal data would have to be very technically competent, and be prepared to wait a very long time for anything significant to transfer.

Hope this helps.

Jon

[Guest TonyL]

Jon, my company is the same - the Blackberry is the preferred device. End to end encryption of data traffic and the ability to push company wide a screen lock after 20 seconds and after 10 attempts the device will wipe itself - pretty good feature - hard to enforce on PDA's and smartphones.

(Disco) Stu, Im at an investment bank and I can guarantee that 90% of the contacts will be clients. You can select categories to synch but most will forget. As one banker pointed out "yes they are contact details of our clients, but you only have to grab the yellow pages or surf the website of the client and you'll get the same details" - good point - damn!

There is a product from Digital River that covers PDA/smartphone security (URL) - looks good but will users want us to encrypt their own device and who supports it when it goes wrong - the IT department we have wouldnt be happy.

All feed back welcome :lol:

[Guest Isa]

I work in an investment bank as well (not in IT though) - smartphones are not allowed. Blackberry is allowed, as well as some PDAs but that's it.

[Guest Pukka]

Again working for a Bank. We have a list of recommended devices for use. Having looked at it, the device of choice is the Compaq (is it iPAQ?)

[Guest statscat]

I suppose this all begs the question,

what exactly does the MS smartphone "family of products" need to do that they currently aren't doing.

Go for it, make a wish list, I am sure MS would love to get on those "preferred devices list .......oh yeah...ching....ching.......ching.

granular control over what is "syncable"

ability to "erase all" OTA (* obviously has strict rules regarding where the command is from etc )

let MS know whats lacking........

[Guest morpheus2702]

My god, I never knew the security implications were so far reaching!

I work for an electronics company, supposedly 'hi-tech'. But aside from me everyone thinks I am probably charging my phone!

I had no idea that Blackberries were so popular in business echelons. You love and learn!

[Guest jonblakeburn]

I work for *ahem* IBM, and I'm happily charging (and synchronising, well, what little changes there are to synchronise! :lol:) my E200 at my desk.

As far as I can see there's no real risk - I'm only Syncing with my own contacts, and I don't wish to carry my 30+ Emails-a-day around with me, so its only my Outlook's personal contacts, and my calendar.

Strange how the Blackberry is chosen over the E200/E100/SPV - I've never seen it as a very user-friendly device... Maybe I've just not played with it enough though...

[Guest TonyL]

The catch for me isnt just Smartphones, its pretty much any phone that has the ability to synch up and swap contact and calendar. Mail isnt so much of a necessity.

Although smartphones are in the majority. Then you have Reuters developing a java (?) based price ticker for the P800/900. So no doubt bankers will be buying those in unlimited numbers.

The Blackberry roll out at my company is due to start in Feb 04. We're making the bankers pay for them at £150 a go, The device also has the ability to make calls. I dont like them and neither do many of the bankers as they are pretty much the size of the XDA (shudder) and ugly (Blackberry).

All I'd like is MS to develop Active Synch so that we can deploy it with the feature of synching mail disabled. Then we're done.

The problem then is it looks like we're approving any product that has ActiveSynch, so we get users complaining that have Sony/Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung, etc etc

No win situation really. But still interesting to get feed back on how other companies are dealing with the issue :lol:

[Guest darant]

Why would you want to sync at work anyway? Surely if your company wanted you to sync data then they would provide their choice device whatever it may be. The smartphone is no different from having a laptop that you take to and from work. it's not as if you can successfully connect to your corporate network from your phone unless syncing with your mail server which in turn kind of answers the original question?

Posted from my SmartPhone!

[Guest mwille]

I sync my SPV and my PPC with my work computer and use the company LAN on my PPC via 802.11b.. So no troubles here :lol:

[Guest TonyL]

Why would you want to sync at work anyway? Surely if your company wanted you to sync data then they would provide their choice device whatever it may be. The smartphone is no different from having a laptop -

I see your point, reason being

- most corporates dont want to foot the bill. £1000+ for a laptop £150 for a Blackberry. With 7000 users in the UK alone, 32000 world wide, thats a lot of money!

- users already have the devices, so why not use what they already have purchased and know how to use

- Bankers and traders want up-to-the-minute information. A laptop is to cumbersome and not a lot of use when on the road travelling without a phoneline or broadband. They could use cellular mobile, but have u seen windows authenticate and run login scripts and then start Outlook off line. You can watch someone get grey hair by the time the get to see their mail esp at 9600 and dont forget you have to pay for the dialup infrastructure, ISP or Equant costs a fortune and call costs, and from abroad. STOP again loads a money

- As I said before most want contacts and calendar - the simplest way to do it is in the office from the cradle.

[Guest capt_janeway]

Although mine is a private phone I am allowed to sync at work.

it's very handy for me to be able to wander around my office with my diary and all my contacts at hand.

[Guest krankie]

I work for a bank too. I did notice the other day that one of our senior managers has a cradle of some description plugged into the back of her PC. I've no idea whether it is a company supplied one or her own, or what device it is for.

At the moment though we are on Lotus Notes but we are downgrading (in my opinion) to Outlook soon. At that point it would be useful to be able to sync calendars with my SPV but I will cross that bridge when we come to it. At the moment I just enter meetings etc directly into the phone.

[Guest mcwarre]

I work for the military and have no chance of 'synching' at work. :roll: :roll: :roll:

However, I just backup everything then email it to my home email addy then synch....

Easy way around it. Not ideal but a lot better than nothing

[Guest TANKERx]

I take my Smartphone into work, but I can't turn it on in the hangars (I work for a company that does heavy maintenance of longhaul aircraft). However, I always get a good ribbing from the folks in the office when my SPV keeps crashing and their Symbian smartphones work day after day without reboot or recharge...... But then I whip out my ER6 Nokia 9210 and show them the power in that thing :-)

[Guest Coucou]

I'm allowed to use mine at work, kept the IT guy sweet and he managed to integrate it onto our (horrible) Citrix server. :lol:

[Guest rireed]

I'm in a large bank. Our whole corporation including IT is being migrated to a centrally controlled Windows platform with a catalog of software which is 'download on first use each day' after being enabled for the user on request of his/her department head.

Happily, Async 3.7.1 is in the catalog, even though only Blackberry is issued when management requires such a device (my SPV is private).

[Guest akarno]

I work at a large investment bank. Again the prefered device is Blackberry.

General policy is that you can sync your own PDA device, but not over USB. All USB ports are disabled. This leaves an interesting issue. I have a serial sync cable for my SPV, but I cannot upgrade as neither the E200 or the MPx200 have a serial sync cable available yet.

[Guest dma]

Working in IT dept in a Law firm.

We must have 200+ Blackberry users & any fee earner is allowed to have any PDA. It's a really bad policy in place that has so many holes in. All email is screened and there is no access to web email clients from the desktop & no floppy drives. Yet you can plug in a PDA or USB PenDrive and take whatever you want :? Main concern is for client data being stolen.

Only had one SPV as far as I am aware, and I got stuck with setting it up as I already had one. Typical.