Mobiles - Why Document Management System.

See this article on Risk Management techniques.

Some excerpts from this article:

In years of consulting with Wall Street clients, John Pironti, a board member of ITGI (IT Governance Institute) and chief strategist for Getronics (www
.getronics.com), has learned that some of these security-obsessed financial giants lose as many as 10 BlackBerrys per day. A 2005 survey by CheckPoint Software (www.check
point.com) found more than 25,000 PDAs and laptops left in Chicago taxis over a six-month period. Many have unsecured, confidential data that, if in the wrong hands, could have significant adverse ramifications�a third of CheckPoint’s respondents don’t use passwords or any other security protection on their mobile devices.

25000 PDAs and laptops in one city over 6 months is too high a number. It means that confidential data is not so confidential anymore.

As I mentioned in my previous blog entries, one of best ways is a way where the information does not leave Enterprise. That is where I feel that document management systems should come in very useful. It should provide facilities for access, modify existing documents and create new documents. Of course, this facility is to be provided only if the user is privileged to do the operations. Since mobiles are becoming versatile, a good document management system must provide thick java based application on mobiles for accessing document management system in easy-to-use manner. It also need to provide facility to do off-line work on a specific documents if they are allowed to be downloaded. Also, these downloaded documents must be stored locally in mobiles with strong encryption - Either this could be application based or this can be done using encrypted file systems on mobiles.

If I am IT professional, I look for this minimal feature set in document management systems:

• Easy-to-create work spaces.
• User Group management.
  
• Association of Users to User Groups ( Could be done in LDAP or RADIUS Servers)
• Creation of new documents, Modification of existing documents with history maintained.
• Modification only after checkout with lock.
• Releasing lock upon check-in.
  
• Task Management.
• Work flow management.
• Access control
  
• Read permission on work space and document.
• Write permissions on modifying on per item in workspace.
• Create new documents.
• Allow Synchronization with mobiles.
  
• Mobile segment related features:
• Thick Client on Mobiles.
• User authentication (beyond authentication required to unlock the mobile).
• Easy-to-use UI
  
• Both online and offline editing should be possible.
• Synchronization of document data between Mobile application and backend document management system using OMA-DS.
  
• Encrypted storage.