Wireless Application Security

 

AT&T believes that effective end-to-end security can only be achieved through a close relationship with our customers. In that close relationship, each party has a distinct role and responsibilities. An effective relationship is the best way to ensure the successful design and deployment of a wireless security solution.

 

AT&T's Role

 

While AT&T cannot guarantee complete security, the role of AT&T in wireless security includes three primary responsibilities:

• To protect the wireless network itself. While data is in transit, AT&T's security measures help protect communications from eavesdropping, interception, and tampering and from attacks that might degrade the network's availability or performance.
• To protect customer data that's stored on our network. AT&T security measures help safeguard information stored both on our wireless network and in our IT systems.
• To help our customers better understand their security needs. AT&T works with you to deploy business applications more securely and to help you define your security needs and identify and fix security gaps. We can also recommend appropriate security technologies.

 

The Customer's Role

 

AT&T also cannot ensure the security of any communications segment that is outside our control, so it is essential that our customers implement comprehensive end-to-end security measures for all their wireless applications. However, AT&T will work with you to help establish secure connections between your network and ours.

As an enterprise customer, you are responsible for protecting the data that your wireless applications use. In particular, you must provide security in the following areas:

The wireless device. AT&T often provides the mobile devices, but only you, the enterprise customer, can ensure the security of data stored in them. This includes implementing measures such as:

• Encrypting data on the device
• Authenticating users locally, from the device

Using remote management tools to enforce security policies and to erase the data from or disable (wipe/kill) devices that are lost or stolen.

The communication segment between AT&T and your enterprise. Measures to protect this segment may include the same ones that protect wireless devices, as well as using virtual private networks (VPNs), the application itself, or another solution to encrypt data in transit.

The communication segment between your enterprise's firewall and the enterprise itself. This segment will likely fall under your enterprise's normal security practices, but it may be necessary to adapt them to the particular needs of wireless technology. In particular, you must make sure that you can securely connect this segment to the device and to the segment between AT&T and your enterprise.