iPad’s, Tablets and Identity Theft?
Posted by Karim Dharamshi on Thu, Nov 18, 2010
Following the success of its ipredecessors, the iPad is currently the hottest item in the Apple Store. Young and old alike are gobbling them up at a record pace, and with Christmas just around the corner you can bet your jingle bells that many will appear under the tree. In the world of tablets, 2010 belongs to the iPad.
But don’t get too attached because 2011 and beyond will see many new tablets introduced into the marketplace. For 2011, the headliner looks to be the Research in Motion Playbook. Look for a good fight between the titans of gadgetry, RIM and Apple, clashing on Planet Tablet. Then get ready for an onslaught of Tablets taking over your local Best Buy. Namely one’s with the Android platform. The market looks a whole lot different today than it will in 2014: As Duncan Stewart of the Globe and Mail states “the market may have a much larger enterprise component: almost all tablet are bought by individual consumers but [Deloitte] research suggests that by 2014 up to 40 percent will be purchased by corporations”.
Will using a tablet, whether for personal or professional purposes, increased your risk of identity theft? It just might. The most obvious concern is that the user may misplace their tablet and leave the information on it vulnerable to whoever finds it. Let’s face it: you are more likely to be going out and about with your tablet in tow than you are with your laptop. Isn’t that the purpose of a tablet? How many people do you know who have left their desktop on the subway train, or their laptop in the stall of a public washroom? Conversely, I bet you’ve heard of people losing tablets and smartphones this way!
Here’s a less obvious concern put forth by a study commissioned by Juniper Network and carried out by KRC Research: 81% of the 6000 tablet and smartphone users who participated in the study claimed to have accessed their employer’s network (from a tablet or smartphone) without their employer’s permission. The study found that use of tablets is not exclusive to personal or 
professional, with 44% of users conducting both personal and business activities on their tablets, while only 4% reported using tablets strictly for business. Whether for business or recreation, tablets are the latest vehicle on the information highway.
Mark Baunhaous of Juniper Networks suggests that security become an integrated part of the mobile experience, and he puts that responsibility on the industry, rather than the user: "Smartphones and tablets have become the new onramp for information, applications and commerce — yet they are quickly becoming an onramp for security threats as well.”
The tablet industry will continue to explode and hopefully as it does, industry leaders will begin to put more thought into security to protect users- particularly if those users are large companies with lots of private information to guard. In the mean time you can do something to protect yourself: don’t forget your iPad in a taxi, or a streetcar, or the Tim Horton’s washroom… you have the power!