Is your boss spying on your smartphone?

Smartphones were once perks of privilege for businesses, but no more. How can a business not provide an Internet-capable phone to knowledge workers when their kids are running around with iPhones and communicating only by text?

The reality of giving a much broader range of employees access to e-mail and corporate data via a wireless device is a more complex question than it might seem, given the conventional wisdom that everyone on the planet will soon be carrying the Internet in their pocket.

When that smartphone is an enterprise device, that means part of the corporate network now lives in each employee’s pocket or handbag. Corporate security issues have to be considered, as do costs of providing data access. It’s no small wonder that an industry seems to be growing up around giving corporate IT departments more control over who can access data from a mobile device — and how much they spend doing it.

But there is much more to this whole issue. Enterprises have long held that what employees do on company-owned computers using company-owned networks should be fully open to company scrutiny, and that makes perfect sense. When it gets down to monitoring use of a personal data device, it would seem the same standard would apply. But will it?

Will employees allow their communications to be monitored by an IT department? Some uses, such as downloading applications, will inevitably be scrutinized, but what about personal communications?

In the current mode, the deck is stacked against the employer, who doesn’t control the networks over which data devices operate. Enterprises can limit what they pay for data use and refuse to pay overages or additional charges, but as more employees carry smartphones, even that process can become cumbersome.

New technology now coming to the market will reverse that, giving employers more control over costs and usage. Some approaches also enable service providers to offer that kind of control as a managed service. We are about to see how the folks who have been paying the data bills will react to newfound authority and power.

E-mail me at carol.wilson@penton.com.