Designing an Enterprise Handheld Security Policy - Part III

When a device is synchronized with a workplace computer, it is vital that measures are put in place to stop it from retrieving confidential business documents. Normal synchronization software will allow the device to grab any new documents without checking if they are confidential or not.

The problem occurs when an employee takes his or her device home and perhaps syncs it with their home computer. The confidential documents are now transferred to the user's home machine, which may not have the security mechanisms in place that the organizations computers do. It is wise to restrict the synchronization ability of devices, and perhaps to not allow them to synchronize at all.

Automatic, silent wifi synchronization should be disabled. If a device mistakenly synchronizes with the wrong host computer, all sorts of problems could ensue. In general, this is not a major problem, but for security reasons it is best to have this disabled by default.