"A clear policy of no camera-enabled phones -- just as there is a clear policy in most companies that no cameras are allowed on the premises -- is required and desirable," said Jack Gold, an analyst with IT research firm Meta Group.
Most organisations will "look unfavourably" on camera-enabled devices and will wish to "restrict their acquisition and use". They should set firm policies for such devices, he said.
While the image quality of cameras in most phones is poor, they are a channel for leaks of sensitive data or other images that can produce "unintended consequences", said Gold.
In few years, as the cost of putting cameras into phones drops ever further, most phones will sport one, he said.
"Although small, easy-to-carry digital cameras are also a threat, the sheer number of mobile phones with cameras represents a far larger installed base. Very few people currently carry digital cameras with them everywhere they go, as they do with mobile phones," he said.
Gold recommends that firms that supply staff with phone ensure that the mobile operators permanently disable the camera hardware. He also believes that firm should ask visitors to hand over phones for inspection before allowing them in.
For organisations that value security even higher, he suggests that they screen all mobile devices, not just phones, for cameras.
Analysts have predicted that there will be almost 1 billion camera phones in use within five years, which has led companies such as Samsung and LG Electronics to bar employees from using camera phones in research and manufacturing facilities because of fears over the security of sensitive data.
Besides corporate espionage, the growing popularity of camera phones has also sparked concerns over individual privacy. In some countries, the uses of these gadgets are already prohibited in public areas such as swimming pools and changing rooms to protect consumers against the wandering lenses of voyeurs.
Bookstore owners in Japan are also mulling measures to stop female shoppers from snapping pictures of magazines with their camera-phones, a trend they termed "digital shoplifting".
Korean authorities are reportedly mulling a law which makes it mandatory for phone makers to install a "noise emitter" in their camera-equipped handsets.
Under the proposed bill by Korea's ruling Millennium Democratic Party, manufacturers will have to design their camera phones to emit a loud noise when pictures are taken. This will alert the public when their pictures are snapped to prevent human rights infringements and industrial espionage.
Electronics firm Iceberg Systems is beta-testing Safe Haven, which combines hardware transmitters with a small piece of control software loaded into a camera phone handset. When the handset is taken into a room or building containing the Safe Haven hardware, the phone is instructed to deactivate the imaging systems. The systems are reactivated when the handset is out of range.
Talkback
In my opinion this is yet another example of the typical knee-jerk reaction demonstrated by companies who wish to be seen to be proactively protecting proprietary information, but are sadly out of touch with reality.
It seems ironic that most employees in manufacturing support organisations (planning, IT, finance) are freely issued with laptops these days to allow flexible working practices, yet the same organisations are paranoid about the (mistaken) threat of employee-owned camera-phones.
What self-respecting employee, intent on a spree of industrial espionage, would risk the embarassment (or even waste time) by photographing a 100 page document with a 640x480 pixel VGA camera-phone with no external storage? It would take forever (even with an integrated SD/CF/MS card slot) and probably be totally illegible. Surely the smart thief would opt for one of the easy options .....
a) Email the document to interested parties?
b) Transfer to CD-ROM / Floppy / Flash Memory?
c) Simply save the document on his/her laptop and share the document with a competitor without leaving an e-trail?
d) Log-in remotely from a hotel room and give the competitor full access to all company systems?
For visitors, I can accept that any cameras should be left at the security desk, but organisations really need to accept the fact that todays e-methods have effectively made this method of industrial espionage virtually redundant. 99% of snaps taken on a camer-phones are generally in bars, on vacation, or both.
Time for a reality check.
What a ridiculous notion. Why bother doing mobile phone photography espionage when most employees can print out most sensitive documents and take them outside the company anyway. A ban is only worthy of consideration where access to 3D prototypes is possible, but why mobile phones? I can get a much better picture out of a 2megapixel camera the size of a USB memory stick. The real issue is the leakage of ideas, software code, hardware design, contract information and sales contacts. How, for example, do you stop a disgruntled salesman leaving your company and taking your CRM database with him? Or emailing it to a competitor - after all, the law prevents you snooping on employees emails. And forget high-tech countermeasures to prevent email and database export; he can still print CRM details page by page. More effort should be placed on how corporate confidentiality is to be protected in general rather than this ridiculous knee-jerk reaction.