ComputerWorld: How to keep your smartphone (and its data) secure

These tips and tools can help you keep your smartphone close, and protect your data if it strays.

By Daniel P. Dern
April 22, 2014

In our daily activities, our smartphones increasingly store or access sensitive business and personal data -- not just email, but also financial and medical information, company systems, travel itineraries, etc. Many of us also use smartphones to access cloud data repositories like Dropbox, Evernote, Google Docs, Microsoft OneDrive and Apple iCloud.

And then there's the growing use of smartphones in other privacy/control-sensitive aspects of our personal lives -- as home monitors, for example, or as smart keys for doors.

Given the important information and accounts that your smartphone -- and tablet -- can access, it's essential to keep unauthorized users from using it as a gateway to your data. Unfortunately, since your mobile device travels with you almost everywhere, the odds of it being misplaced, lost, hacked or stolen -- and, in turn, putting your data and apps at risk -- are high.

What follows is a look at some products, services and techniques to protect access to the data on your Android, iOS or Windows Phone mobile devices.

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