Whilst many educators are in favour of the concept of providing 1:1 ICT access on a 24/7 basis there have been some concerns put forward about the possible security issues around every child or student having one. There's already been a lot of discussion in the media about
mobile phone theft so could we be facing a future potential problem if every student has a bling bling handheld computer?
Ideally there would be away of making a stolen or lost device completely useless once out of the hands of its rightful owner thus making theft pointless. However any software solution on current devices would be overcome by a simple hard reset, so manufacturers interested in providing devices for the education sector might want to agree on a security standard and then build this into the firmware.
There's an interesting article on
Techworld.com that discusses some of the issues and possible solutions:
Handheld devices pose problems all of their own when it comes to security. First of all, as the US Computer Security Resource Center notes, they are more vulnerable than laptop or desktop PCs because of their size and mobility, but at the same time, PC security mechanisms cannot simply be transferred over - because of the power needed, say, or the smaller size of the device, or the attachment method, or the programming interfaces in the operating system.
However, these devices also have built-in characteristics which PCs typically lack, such as touchscreens, microphones or expansion slots for memory cards. These can offer new and different methods of security and authentication.
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Anybody got any bright ideas?
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