Then there is the big emerging market of the year – Podcasting. In the same way that the DVD recorder and Sky+ box have revolutionised the way we handle the time-shifted world of television, Podcasting is doing the same for audio and it seems everyone is doing it. In the UK, the most popular Podcast is the BBC Radio 1 breakfast show. Unsurprisingly, it is most often downloaded during the day, probably by people who missed it while travelling into work.

It is not just audio that is driving the Podcasting market. The BBC and several other channels have committed to putting their TV programs out via broadband. They are also allowing them to be downloaded from websites. As this requires a reasonable bandwidth to get several programs, it is not unreasonable to expect that this will often be done at work.

The mobile video market has no doubt been helped substantially by the entrance of Apple with a video iPod. However, there are numerous other vendors, such as Archos, that have had high capacity video jukebox players for a number of years now. The storage in these devices is set to soar with the introduction of new perpendicular disk drives. We are already seeing the first 160GB disk drives and they will only get bigger.

While this is ideal for very high quality video it also poses a massive and significant risk to corporate data. The capacities at this high end equate to a laptop drive. This means that vast amounts of corporate data can be removed on a small consumer device that sits in the pocket.

Introducing measures to prevent such devices from connecting to corporate resources are failing. As fast as vendors bring out software to identify and block the devices, device manufacturers and software companies are releasing utilities to hide the devices from network administrators. A common approach now is to just report them as removable CD players. This allows them to avoid many of the restrictive practices introduced by the network administrators.


The goal, then, is not to exhaust resources trying to ban the devices, but find a way to encompass their existence within the corporate data security policy.

One of the first problems is that devices are likely to have content put on them at different locations. There are no anti-virus, anti-spyware programs for the majority of these devices although software to protect Smartphone’s is beginning to appear. With multiple connection points for the mobile device, corporate desktops and laptops MUST be updated with the relevant software.

As the capacities increase, another measure, if these devices are to be tolerated, is to introduce transfer quotas. These allow you to restrict the amount of data that can be moved to an individual device. While this will not prevent data being taken out of the building it will restrict the quantity that can be taken at any one time.

A major problem with consumer devices is that they are not looked after carefully and attract thieves. This is where companies can take a very positive step to protect data. There are products that insist on encrypting data as it is being moved onto portable devices.