From an article posted last week: Is The iPhone Insecure?, I was asked for an opinion by a member of our Enterprise Architecture team.
Here’s what I said:
Meh… they’ve all got a point.
In terms of reality time… well, it’s simple… the “big E” Enterprise guys won’t find much to like, for all the reasons that they don’t like MacOS… it’s not something designed to fit into their expression of the technocracy. If it has a legitimate business user, you’ll find that it’s the same business user type who is already committed to the Apple ecosystem. In terms of the executive toy concept, well, lets just say that executives who toy around this way don’t tend to stay executives for long — they don’t understand how to comprehend risk appropriately. In terms of the “will it be a raging security hole that causes lots of people to lose their data” issue – probably not. It will have flaws (Apple rarely if ever does 1.0 well) but those flaws will be managed with expediency that is not normally seen in the computer business and the iPhone equivalent of Software Update means that you won’t be pants-down while some IT guy gets around to upgrading your handheld (my company BB is down-rev sufficiently that it’s got gaping security holes and does not even have the EVDO firmware upgrade).
Is the iPhone a bigger or smaller target than the RIM or Nokia smartphones (the Windows ones are non-starters – they crash while trying to be phones… let alone handheld computers)? Bigger target for right now — mostly because it’s fun to make hipsters cry. In the long run… follow the money… you’ll find it connected to the people with the BB and Nokia devices.
More witty analysis available for my fee of only $1000/page.
😀
I’ve let that one stew for a few days before posting here, and I’m pretty sure that I’ve not changed my mind. Anyone else have an analysis of the risks/rewards of the iPhone?
[tags]iPhone, apple fanboy, RIM, Nokia, executive toy, enterprise risk[/tags]