If you're like most professionals, you have a laptop, a mobile phone and a BlackBerry-type device that you travel with. If you're company is worth anything, it has installed the bare minimum of security measures on your laptop, such as password verification to launch the desktop or other sensitive applications or files.

Not only that, but many have systems to protect their Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios from skulking hackers who would steal into your laptop wirelessly from afar.

But what about your mobile devices, especially those equipped with Bluetooth?

My own company makes me key in a password every time I boot my laptop, and I have to change it every 60 days, lest I be denied access. The same is not true for my company-issued BlackBerry. No passwords, no keys, zip.

Should it matter? You betcha. If anyone were to snag my BlackBerry, they'd have access to all my email (which is quite a damn lot) and all my contacts (numbering over 1000). Now, any street punk would care less about this data, he or she would just want to score $20 for the phone. But a coprorate spy (yes, they do exist) would find the information invaluable.

There are a number of products out there on the market to protect smart and not-so-smart phones. My favorite include biometrics (finger print swipes) on the handsets. After training the swipe to read your fingerprint, you can lock any phone and more easily unlock it to answer calls or access programs. The cost of the fingerprint swipe chips is easily as mass market levels, so I can't say why we haven't seen more of the incorporated into phones.

 

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