Views on iPad security

[Eric]

What is your considered opinion regarding iPad security? Do you think that they are safe at all? Do you think that it is reasonable to "process" pupil and staff data on them, without additional layers of security (in the sense used by the Data Protection Act?)

 

I am inclined to regard iPads used with a PIN or passphrase as being as secure as a laptop with encrypted disk, although sadly they are likely to be using a shorter passphrase to generate the key material.

 

Please tell me what you think.

[SovietRussia]

Security on iPads should be pretty good, due to using UNIX etc.

 

Regarding security as in software, all backups we do are forced as encrypted.

[iom100]

Depends on how you enforce the PIN or passphrase. Would you know if teacher/admin removed the PIN 'because it was annoying'? This leads to some sort of MDM software - which probably gives the extra nice-to-haves such as remote wipe and location tracking.

 

How are you accessing the data - with an iPad I've found that it's fairly likely to be cloud based. You've got to then think about the network and hosting security too.