Managing Bluetooth at work: Part 1

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How much you need to do in any case as a user organisation to protect against Bluetooth threats depends on what your business is, says Evans.

"It depends what application you're talking about how concerned you'll be about security. Our products form a key part of traffic management applications, for example. Traffic lights are of course important, but not often hacked. You can in any case configure devices in such situations to only expect one other device to connect to them. The same applies to the medical arena, with patient monitoring."

When planning how to protect your Bluetooth devices, don't just look out. Some of the threat may be closer to home. Research from network management company Prefix IT shows that Bluetooth is a favourite way for employees to steal corporate data. It revealed that many staff are happily lifting data and sales leads by this means without even considering it stealing.

"In 10 seconds staff can download 10 Mbs of data to a device - that's the equivalent of 20,000 customer records," said Graeme Pitts-Drake, UK chief executive of network management vendor Prefix. "UK managers are living in dreamland if they think that theft doesn't happen in their organisation, it's a fact of business life today."

To conclude, a warning to Bluetooth users from security consultants Thierry Zoller and Kevin Finistere mentioned at the beginning of this article. Their 'things to remember' are as follows:

Don't accept every file you are being send, just click 'no'

Hold your Bluetooth vendor accountable for vulnerabilities

Click here to read part 2 of this feature.

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