A word of warning to those thinking of leaving IBM
Category IBM BYOD
Late on Friday night I got a call from a distraught friend, their daughter had been playing with their mobile phone, and whilst the child was playing with the phone, the device had prompted for a password, after their 5th attempt at entering a password the device reset itself to Factory settings. So what had happened?
Well about 3 months ago this person was let got by IBM, prior to that, they had been using their own iPhone as their business phone, you know all that we're so tight so bring your own device nonsense. So part of the deal at IBM, is if you use your own device, they install some IBM security software which enables remote wipe and enhanced security etc. It appears that part of the leaving process at IBM is not removing that software. So when the daughter tried one too many passwords, the phone was reset, losing everything since the last backup. Sadly for this person, that last backup was on their IBM laptop a few months ago which they no longer have. So all the photos of her kids on her phone gone, Christmas school stuff with kids, gone. You get the picture.
So if you work at IBM and use your own device here's a few suggestions:
1. Backup your device regularly to a none IBM owned device, if you are using iOS, then iCloud is a great option.
2. Check those backups, even if you're taking them make sure they work.
3. Seriously consider if you really want IBM to do what they want with YOUR device. You signed up for them to zap what they want, do you really want that?
4. Pull photos and videos off your phone regularly onto a local PC (that you own)
Late on Friday night I got a call from a distraught friend, their daughter had been playing with their mobile phone, and whilst the child was playing with the phone, the device had prompted for a password, after their 5th attempt at entering a password the device reset itself to Factory settings. So what had happened?
Well about 3 months ago this person was let got by IBM, prior to that, they had been using their own iPhone as their business phone, you know all that we're so tight so bring your own device nonsense. So part of the deal at IBM, is if you use your own device, they install some IBM security software which enables remote wipe and enhanced security etc. It appears that part of the leaving process at IBM is not removing that software. So when the daughter tried one too many passwords, the phone was reset, losing everything since the last backup. Sadly for this person, that last backup was on their IBM laptop a few months ago which they no longer have. So all the photos of her kids on her phone gone, Christmas school stuff with kids, gone. You get the picture.
So if you work at IBM and use your own device here's a few suggestions:
1. Backup your device regularly to a none IBM owned device, if you are using iOS, then iCloud is a great option.
2. Check those backups, even if you're taking them make sure they work.
3. Seriously consider if you really want IBM to do what they want with YOUR device. You signed up for them to zap what they want, do you really want that?
4. Pull photos and videos off your phone regularly onto a local PC (that you own)
| Permalink | 
Comments
Posted by Vitor Pereira At 11:44:58 AM On 12/10/2012 | - Website - |
Posted by Paul Mooney At 02:53:09 PM On 12/10/2012 | - Website - |
Posted by Paul Mooney At 02:53:11 PM On 12/10/2012 | - Website - |
But this feature can be enabeled or disabled. If enabled the default setting is 10 attempts (and you need a lot of time to reach 10 due to timeouts).
So on an iPhone the 5 tries indicate this was set by a Mobile Device Management tool as this number can't be set by the user.
Posted by Harald Gaerttner At 04:09:59 AM On 12/11/2012 | - Website - |
Icloud is disabled if you use the device for IBM business... not a viable option.
Posted by Roberto Boccadoro At 05:21:41 AM On 12/11/2012 | - Website - |
What I meant is, it's a phone setting not software that should have been removed.
Posted by Vitor Pereira At 05:38:30 AM On 12/11/2012 | - Website - |
You should NOT trust your [cell service/operating system/employer/apps providers/facebook/the cloud] not to screw up your data at some point. Nobody is perfect, some are incompetent, and some are evil.
Think about what is specifically "yours" that you would miss and not be able to recreate if it were gone, and back that up to another device that is "yours". At the VERY LEAST, pull photos, videos, contacts, and documents off your phone regularly onto your PC.
Posted by maria helm At 02:05:37 PM On 12/12/2012 | - Website - |