Mobility Risks & Opportunities

With every technology, there exist advantages and disadvantages. Users and/or companies must weigh both before making a decision on whether to incorporate the technology into their daily routines. Mobility is no different. However, mobility takes many forms in technology. Mobility can represent devices like laptops, netbooks, tablets, and phones or media such as CDs, DVDs, flash drives, and memory cards (i.e. SD cards).

First, let's review some risks of mobility. Due to mobility, devices and media can be loss or stolen. If this occurs, there are tools that can read all the information on a device or media. I use Hiren's Boot CD (or USB stick) on a regular basis. It contains tools to crack OS passwords, BIOs passwords, retrieve data from encrypted hard drives, and retrieve data from corrupted hard drives. It's amazing how easy it truly is. Due to tools like this, data breaches especially from lost devices or media is a major threat. Additionally, mobile devices need to connect to a wireless connection to receive Internet. Tools like Karma can act like a secure access point, but in reality it is a computer logging every key stroke of a victim computer. There are definitely many risks to mobility; however, a well informed user can take precautions to compensate for these risks and minimize the hazards to mobility.

Now on the other hand, mobility offers a multitude of opportunities. There is a reason that phones have gained popularity, and tablets are climbing the charts - mobility. Society does not want to wait or be locked down to a specific location to access information or to communicate. Also, at one point in time it was a necessity to memorize facts. Now mobile technology allows us to instantly look up these facts, offering us the option of answering or entertaining more complex and higher order thoughts and ideas. Moreover where once we discovered knowledge at specific times of the day, we are now plugged into an endless source of knowledge 24/7/365. We work, learn, and communicate more than ever. The amount of data that we create is increasing exponentially due to the fact that our devices allow us to be mobile and create any time we want. Furthermore, mobility has gained popularity enough to drive the cost of production down, allowing more users to have access to these mobile devices.

As you can see, there are risks to mobility; however, a well educated user minimizes the risks. Thus, the opportunities and potential of mobile devices and media outweigh the risks. Hence, the growth of mobile devices and media results in a continuous expansion in the opportunities that the devices and media present.

References

Fogie, S. (2006). Wireless karma. InformIt. Retrieved on January 2, 2012 from http://www.informit.com/guides/content.aspx?g=security&seqNum=185.

Hiren. (2011). Hiren's boot CD. Hiren. Retrieved on January 2, 2012 from http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd.

Landy, G., and Mastrobattista, A. (2008). The IT / Digital Legal Companion: A Comprehensive Business Guide to Software, IT, Internet, Media and IP Law. Syngress: Burlington. ISBN-13: 978-1597492560