Nokia Lumia: The secure business smartphone

The Nokia Lumia range leads the way when it comes to features such as cameras and navigation, but now, organisations with increased security standards and established security policies have started to sit up and take notice of handsets like the Nokia Lumia 620, Lumia 820 and Lumia 920. That’s because Windows Phone 8 is designed to be very secure.
Security features on Windows Phone 8 include secure boot, which ensures the phone only runs authentic software and passwords with the ability to pre-define the number of failed password attempts. There’s also hardware accelerated encryption for all your data and the operating system itself and encryption for network traffic such as with Exchange Server and SharePoint.

This makes a big difference in the business world, as the majority of companies have data that’s sensitive in one way or another. “If organizations are going to use smartphones for business use and accessing company sensitive data, security is something that needs to be considered, says Tarja Kantola, from Smart Devices Product Marketing. “Data protection is the real strength of Windows Phone 8.”

“With Nokia Lumia, companies can enable hardware-based encryption on their devices,” adds Tarja. “Hardware assistance means that running the encryption activities does not impact the performance of the other applications.”

Keeping data safe isn’t the only thing that companies may worry about either, and potential malware attacks that could compromise your applications or the information stored on a device may actually originate from the Internet.

The Nokia Lumia’s Internet browser is designed with safer browsing in mind. Tarja says: “If you look for example at a laptop, you have the browser application on your operating system, and most malware tries to attack via the browser. People may accidentally pick up malware just by visiting infected websites.”

“The Internet Explorer 10 browser and all other apps run in their own isolated chambers. This chamber mode means that the apps, like the browser, don’t have access to other applications or to camera, location or microphone, for example, without the user’s permission.“

A lot of other security breaches are introduced accidentally when installing software. That’s why Microsoft has spent time and effort making the Windows Phone Store the most secure app store around.

Tarja explains: “The Windows Phone Store uses a careful submission and approval process to protect against malware reaching the Store. Microsoft checks all the applications for harmful content before publishing into the Store. That means it’s pretty safe to install apps and games from the Store.”

And if nothing else, it’s always easy to set a password on your Nokia Lumia handset:

“Individual users don’t always realise how important it is to protect their data,” says Tarja. “I would at the minimum use the device lock capability, so if I lose the device at least it’s locked. Setting a password is a simple but effective first line of defence.”

“With device management, companies can remotely enforce the use of passwords, manage the security and even the private company apps for an entire fleet of devices. Companies can also choose from compatible solutions such as AirWatch, MobileIron, PointSharp, Symantec, Zenprise and Windows Intune for remote management,” concludes Tarja.