Samsung bans its own 8GB hard disk cellular phone

Samsung has banned its own cellular phone -- the SCH-B570 -- from being used in the company because the phone includes an 8GB hard drive that could be used to store company secrets, according to an article in Telecoms Korea (no direct link).

Ki-Tae Lee, the CEO of Samsung Electronics’ Telecommunications Network, said during the Wireless Broadband Forum in Seoul that "8GB storage capacity is more than enough to steal all confidential data about our company."

I wonder whether Samsung will be fighting a losing battle in the medium to long term.  As more cellular phones include more storage capacity -- whether it's a hard disk drive or internal memory -- it will be increasingly difficult to ban more and more phones.

Applications dictate storage

And, if large numbers of consumers indeed begin using their cellular phones as music players and to watch and store videos -- as seems very likely -- increased storage capacity will be a necessity.

In addition, many cellular phones include memory cards -- that also are increasing in capacity.  It's easy to find a 512MB or 1MB card, and much higher capacities are available, of course.

Will Samsung (and other companies) ban all cellular phones that incorporate a memory card slot or contain a certain amount of storage space?  And, does Samsung already ban other storage devices, such as iPods and other digital music players?

Not a trivial concern

Corporate data security is not a minor concern.  Right after I posted this article, I saw in jkOnTheRun, one of my favorite mobile technology weblogs, an article about how a significant number of employees connect personal devices to their company computers.

JkOnTheRun points to an article in TechDigest that reports the findings  of a DeviceWall Security Attitudes Survey by Centennial Software.  Discussing the survey, TechDigest says, "70 per cent of workers now plug a USB drive, MP3 player, PDA or other portable device into a computer connected to the company network on a daily basis and 88 per cent plug in a portable device at least weekly. And not many firms are paying attention to it.

"The most common device to be connected to the network was the USB drive -- used by 38 per cent of respondents.  Also popular were PDAs (21 per cent), digital cameras (15 per cent), mobile phones (14 per cent) and MP3 players (7 per cent)."

Banning

Some companies already ban camera phones because of (1) security concerns and (2) fear of employees taking inappropriate photos of other employees.  I wonder if cellular phones with large storage capacities will be the next on the list of banned products.