Overheard talking about ITAR and EAR compliance

Organizations in certain industries will not tolerate the incursion of iPads and iPhones into their IT infrastructure because of compliance reasons. Kevin McDonald, iPads force their way into corporate IT

Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is ITAR and EAR compliance.

“On the HIPAA side and in ITAR, [customers] were booting iPhones,” McDonald said. “We’re removing them in favor of the Blackberry.” (ITAR refers to the U.S. State Department’s International Traffic in Arms Regulations, which outlaw the export of critical technologies that could be used against the U.S.)

“You can’t centrally manage them or control the apps,” McDonald said. “You can’t remote-delete with any assurance. And in an environment where you absolutely must prove where the data goes and where it’s stored, if it’s encrypted, you cannot do that with an iPhone or iPad.”

In short, the strength of the iPad and iPhone — the availability of thousands of apps — is also their weakness when it comes to security. To be fair, Google’s Android phones fall into the same trap, McDonald said.