General Motors created an official iPhone app for keeping up on company news.  Why we need an iPhone app for this is beyond me (above and beyond the trendiness of developing iPhone apps, which I understand), but I guess it will be fun to have an iPhone app dedicated to the notion of tracking GM’s trip through the financial crapper.  I wonder if the app will disappear or quit working when the restructuring committee finds discovers this little project in GM’s marketing budget.

Tags: business, corporate, general motors, gm, iphone, news, pr, software

Another month has passed an our IT Security team has yet to allow iPhone integration with our Exchange system. Windows smart phone users and blackberry users have enjoyed the convenience of accessing their work email, calendar, and taks for years. However, fear of widespread adoption and loss of complete control over where data can be backed up has paralyzed our security team. We’re already aware that all of the data on an iPhone connected to Exchange can be wiped at any time. The concern is that data can be backed up at home (primarily contact info and data stored in calendar appointments). What is stopping people from printing out their contacts, exporting them into a web site, and forwarding contact info and appointments externally? Theoretically, strong network filtering and proxying can prevent this. In practice, it’s just wasted time and effort, not to mention hours of productivity lost by those trying to circumvent these restrictions. If you want your users connected, you have to give up a little control. If you have a problem with that, don’t announce support for the hot new mobile device on the block.

Tags: corporate, iphone, security

Like many technology addicts, I was excited by the prospect of having one device to manage my personal and work life. I’m already a MobileMe (formerly .Mac) subscriber, so my personal contacts, calendar, bookmarks, and email sync great. The news of the ActiveSync-like “push” email and calendar for the iPhone sounded almost too good to be true. At my office, we’ve been testing this feature for months using the original iPhone with beta iPhone software.

In some beta releases, important security features were available and worked well. However, some of these features have disappeared with the public release of the 2.0 software. Beyond the features that disappeared there are several other security concerns. Enough so, that our internal security team decided to delay support of iPhone push support.

All corporate information is sensitive. It’s great that a company-synced phone can be wiped at any time to protect data, but that data could still be backed up to a home computer. If you use a Mac at work, and your company doesn’t “support” iPhone push, you can still sync your Address Book.app and iCal.app with Entourage with a few select settings. Combine that with MobileMe, and you have all of your info on your iPhone whether your corporate overlords like it or not.

If we ever have push support, I’ll be sure to follow up with all of the details: good, bad, and indifferent.

Tags: corporate, iphone, security