Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

Today’s smartphones certainly promise more convenience and functionality. But for IT, these devices promise new nightmares about protecting the data they store. It’s not merely contact data, but files, slides, traffic history, E-mail records, chat transcripts and almost anything else that can be done on a desktop and synched to a smartphone. Then there’s the Grand Poobah of data protection night terrors: Geolocation.

Geolocation is the phone’s capability to tell any app on that phone—or anyone at all, really—the exact location of the phone virtually every minute it has power. Such data is relatively small in size and yet—tied into various other data points (especially time and date)—could be monstrously helpful to some while being stunningly destructive to others. But fear not, IT execs are thinking, there’s no way such data could ever get out to unauthorized places, right? Sprint this month proved otherwise, as we discuss in this week’s Guest Column on McAfee’s Security Blog.