December 9, 2005

Secure Your Cell Phone Or Lose Your Data

For many of us, our cell phones only have lists of telephone numbers with names. If the phone is lost or stolen there's not much data at risk. However, as more and more businesses (especially) have cell phones with more storage and data capacity losing a cell phone can be a data loss nightmare.

PC World writes To be better able to investigate such crimes, Reyes advised that companies take more control of the use of mobile phones, especially in sensitive areas, where corporate secrets could be photographed or downloaded to a telephone. Corporate IT should take over the process of issuing mobile phones because once the device is company property, it can be easily examined for any signs of wrongdoing, he said. "If it's their own phone," he said. "the expectation of privacy is there."

A lot can be learned from an abandoned handset, the panelists noted. In fact, the nascent field of mobile phone forensics is a rapidly advancing field, thanks in part to a number of open source tools created by hackers to examine cell phone memory and network traffic. Using tools like tcpxtract and bitpim investigators are often able to retrieve deleted SMS messages, photographs, and telephone numbers from such devices, Steele said.

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