iPhone - FutureTG.com

(Exchange ActiveSync is not to be confused with regular old ActiveSync,
which is a much older technology that’s designed to update smartphones
and palmtops over a cable.)
Your email, address book, and calendar appointments are now sent
wirelessly to your iPhone, so that it’s always kept current—and it’s sent in
a way that evil rival firms can’t intercept. (It uses 128-bit encrypted SSL, if
you must know.)
That’s the same encryption that’s used by Outlook Web Access (OWA), which lets
employees check their email, calendar, and contacts from any Web browser. In
other words, if your IT administrators are willing to let you access your data using
OWA, they should also be willing to let you access it with the iPhone.
• Mass setup. Using a free software program for Mac or Windows called
the iPhone Configuration Utility, your company’s network geeks can set
up a bunch of iPhones all at once.
This program generates iPhone profiles (.mobileconfig files): canned
iPhone setups that determine all Wi-Fi, network, password, email, and
VPN settings.
The IT manager can email this file to you, or post it on a secure Web page;
either way, you can just open that file on your iPhone, and presto—
you’re all configured and set up. And the IT manager never has to handle
every phone individually.
• Security. In the event of the unthinkable—you lose your iPhone, or it
gets stolen, and vital company secrets are now “in the wild,” susceptible
to discovery by your company’s rivals—the network administrators
have a handy tool at their disposal. They can erase your entire iPhone by
remote control, even though they have no idea where it is or who has it.
Actually, it gets even better. If your company is using the 2007 version of Exchange
Server, you can send a “remote wipe” command to your own iPhone. (You can do
that by logging in to your Outlook Web Access site, using any computer.)
That’s good to remember if you’ve lost your iPhone and don’t really feel up to
admitting it to the IT guy.
The iPhone can now also connect to wireless networks using the latest,
super-secure connections (WPA Enterprise and WPA2 Enterprise), which
are highly resistant to hacker attacks. And when you’re using Virtual
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