Can the government get between President Barack Obama and his BlackBerry? The ongoing battle over whether our new president will be allowed to keep his beloved smartphone illustrates how vulnerable our mobile devices are. And small and midsize businesses would be wise to know what their employees are doing with these phones.
The firm's top executive wants to use a smartphone to streamline his communications. That would seem like a simple request, something that a company would rubber-stamp and approve without spending more than a few seconds considering it. Yet that seemingly innocuous request has resulted in an ongoing debate between President Barack Obama and the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).
Obama has been vocal about his reliance on Research In Motion's (RIM) BlackBerry, but the NSA has not been as gung ho about him using it. The fact that the president wants to work with a BlackBerry represents good news/bad news for the IT community.
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The middle-aged Obama's career evolved during a time when technology was dramatically impacting business, consumer, and family communications. One reason for his successful presidential campaign was an ability to leverage the Internet to communicate with voters as well as raise funds. He and his staff are comfortable with technology and want to use it to improve their communications. In sum, his presidency illustrates how tech savvy our nation has become and, ideally, how small and midsize businesses can use it to compete successfully in the current -- and future -- fierce, global business world.
The bad news is the system Obama wants to use is viewed as insecure. Yet RIM has built up a thriving business by providing executives with an e-mail system that is more secure than Internet-based systems. Vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin illustrated the potential pitfalls of public officials using Internet-based mail services: Her Yahoo account was hacked and its contents posted online.
RIM's BlackBerry system is more secure because it sets up, in effect, a private network on the Internet, authenticating all users before they start uploading and downloading information. The vendor has claimed that organizations that generate sensitive communications, such as the Department of Defense, rely on its system. So at the very least, the government seems to be inconsistent in its communications policies. After all, as a senator, wasn't Obama receiving confidential information and possibly taking a security risk by using his BlackBerry?
However, while better than Internet-based e-mail systems, the BlackBerry network has holes. Vulnerabilities to Microsoft's Windows are reported almost daily, but usually, only a couple -- say, two, three, or four -- are found on the BlackBerry network every year. A couple is very good, maybe excellent, by current security thresholds, but even one is too many for presidential communications.
One reason for the holes is RIM has encouraged openness. The vendor made its software development kit available to the public, so third parties can build add-on applications and products. However, some of the third parties want to destroy rather than enhance the BlackBerry system. Hacker Web sites regularly publish system and network vulnerabilities, and the NSA worries that some of the bad guys may be drawn to the notoriety found with breaking into the president's system.
Global positioning systems (GPS) functions have recently been woven into smartphones, like the BlackBerry, so it's possible that one could surreptitiously track a cell phone's signals. Parents have used it to track their children's whereabouts, and sometimes a suspicious individual has done it to a spouse or friend. Bad guys may use such features to track Obama's whereabouts and use that information to try and harm him.
The inability to use his BlackBerry doesn't mean that the president will not have modern communications methods at his disposal. Rather than rely on a public communications systems like the BlackBerry, the NSA has mandated that the White House and its staff use a proprietary network for e-mail, voice, video, and data delivery. The algorithms used to encrypt the president's data have been custom developed and are classified.
Whether or not the president should take a risk and use a BlackBerry is a debate that may last the next four years. What the issue illustrates is how much more work the IT industry has to do in order to make its systems secure. Why hasn't the industry found a solution to this problem, so it can guarantee secure communications with one system? Will it ever meet this goal?
Also, the debate underscores the fact that your small and midsize business is relying on insecure devices, and if hackers really wanted to, they could break in and create havoc. Do you know how your employees are using GPS features? These aren't very comforting thoughts as a new, tech-savvy administration takes office. Perhaps, the Obama administration's interest in technology will spur more action on solving this problem.
See more columns by Paul Korzeniowski.
Paul Korzeniowski is a Sudbury, Mass.-based freelance writer who has been writing about networking issues for two decades. His work has appeared in Business 2.0, Entrepreneur, Investor's Business Daily, Newsweek, and InformationWeek.
