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Today business travel is a common occurrence, with employees just as easily packing documents for a presentation in Los Angeles as for a presentation in London. Accompanying the increase in travel is a need to stay in touch with the home office. While conventional telephone and fax can provide a significant amount of communications support, by themselves they cannot provide access to electronic mail nor let us review production schedules or pricing maintained on corporate servers back at the home office. Recognizing this gap, a variety of mobile communications systems were developed which enable us to access corporate data from locations ranging from the atrium of the home office to an office thousands of miles from the home office, and which are the focus of this section.
The first chapter in this section, Safe Mobile Computing, introduces us to some of the potential problems that can result from the loss or damage of portable computers, PDAs, and cellular phones. This chapter provides a list of ten questions you should ask to determine if your organization is potentially at risk for stolen or damaged mobile computing equipment, and provides information which forms a foundation for you to answer each question.
Recognizing the mobility of the modern workforce and the need to access electronic mail, the second chapter in this section provides us with a guide to the use of several popular information networks. This chapter, Portable Network Access, first discusses modem related terms to provide us with information necessary to maximize our ability to communicate with different information networks. Once this is accomplished the chapter reviews the access procedures for several popular information networks and electronic mail systems. These access procedures are presented so that they can be easily copied and taken with the portable computer user to facilitate their use of a particular system.
In a series of four chapters in this section we turn our attention to wireless communications. The chapter Wireless Communications for Voice and Data introduces us to wireless radio, wireless PBX systems, cellular voice, satellite voice services, and wireless LANs. This chapter is followed by the chapter Developing a Cost-Effective Strategy for Wireless Communications. This chapter examines the use of wireless communications based upon the types of applications to be used, the communications architecture and access method associated with different types of wireless communications, and available wireless service products. Through the use of a table the appropriateness of different types of wireless communications are compared and contrasted to different potential user requirements which should provide you with a solid baseline for developing a cost-effective strategy for your use of wireless communications.
Continuing our focus on wireless communications, the fifth chapter in this section, Cellular Digital Packet Data: An Emerging Mobile Network Service, introduces us to the technology associated with this cellular communications method and discusses why the technology provides more flexibility and better security features than other cellular systems.
Recognizing the need for security, the last three chapters in this section are focused on this important topic. The sixth chapter, Security of Wireless Local Area Networks, first provides us with an overview of the technology associated with wireless LANs and the reason why security becomes a concern. Building upon this information, several protective security mechanisms identified by the International Standards Organization in its ISO-OSI Reference Model for Security Guidelines are discussed to include encryption, access controls, audit mechanisms, and the development of a security policy. In the seventh chapter in this section, Protection of Mobile Computing Assets, we turn our attention to another aspect of mobile communications security. In this chapter we will become acquainted with computer security principles and how those principles can be applied to the protection of our mobile office.
The last chapter in this section is also the last chapter in our trilogy of security related chapters. This chapter, Mobile User Security, provides us with a comprehensive examination of potential threats and provides a list of safe practices for the mobile user which, when followed, will facilitate our goal to communicate with a minimum risk when we operate in a mobile environment.
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