In a previous blog post I promised to lay out a more detailed picture of why smartphones and tablets are so attractive for sophisticated malicious espionage.  When you want to steal intellectual information or gather competitive intelligence, no more ubiquitous and capable device exists than the modern smartphone.  Equipped with increasingly higher resolution still and video camera capabilities and a microphone in addition to significant storage space, these devices make the perfect espionage tool.  And there’s nothing suspicious about employees bringing them in and out of the enterprise environment every day.

There seems to be an unwritten rule that blog authors must periodically make brash and attention-getting predictions, so here is mine:  In 2012, smart devices will play a crucial role in at least one significant corporate or government breach event.

To my mind, it’s almost impossible that this will not happen.  They are too capable and subvert too many corporate security measures to be ignored by APT actors.  It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.

In Part 2 I’ll discuss a possible scenario for how smartphones will be used to exfiltrate data, bypassing corporate security.