BlackBerry on Wednesday will hold official launch events for its much-anticipated and potentially game-changing Passport smartphone in Toronto, London and Dubai. The Passport's unique square-shaped form factor is designed with business and professional users in mind. In the run-up to these events, BlackBerry CEO John Chen announced that the Passport will be priced at $599 for an unlocked version.

The BYOD trend offers pluses for both employers and employees, but sometimes there's a hitch. Under certain circumstances, the owner of a device suddenly might lose all of the data stored on it. Clients of Fiberlink remotely wiped 81,000 mobile devices between January and June. About 30,000 of them, or 37 percent, were cleaned of everything -- including personal data.

Wireless carriers pose a threat to mobile phone security, researchers have disclosed. Mathew Solnik and Marc Blanchou of Accuvant this week told an audience at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas that Android, BlackBerry and some iOS devices are vulnerable. The problem lies in a device management tool using the OMA Device Management Standard, which carriers embed into mobile devices.

The news that Apple and IBM have joined forces sent a shockwave through the Apple-focused world this week, and I admit it, I was surprised. At first glance, the deal seems to be this big group hug with the two companies becoming inextricably entwined. Yeah, it's not that. In fact, this is the biggest deal that really isn't all that "BIG" that I've seen in a long time.

Doing a factory reset to wipe the data off smartphones does not work, and the data can be recovered, warned Avast. The company recovered tons of data, including more than 40,000 stored photographs, from 20 used Android phones purchased from eBay. Device owners need to overwrite their files to make them irretrievable, Avast said, touting one of the applications it offers.

As if the discovery of the Heartbleed flaw weren't enough woe for OpenSSL, more than half a dozen additional defects have been discovered in the code used to protect communication on the Web. Among them is one dubbed "Cupid" by its discoverers. The flaw can be used to compromise enterprise networks. Like Heartbleed, Cupid uses a malicious heartbeat packet to compromise a TLS connection.

Salesforce.com has announced that its Salesforce1 Mobile App will be generally available in the company's summer release. The app will be accompanied by an enterprise ecosystem consisting of some 65 partner apps, a new connector for SAP, and a slew of new features around sales, service and marketing functionality, said Michael Peachey, senior director of mobile products for Salesforce.com.

Security pros weren't very kind to mobile applications last week. A number of firms knocked apps produced for the smartphone market for all kinds of risky behaviors that could lead to trouble not only for mobile device owners, but also for their employers. While Android has been a poster child for misbehaving apps in the past, competitor Apple's apps aren't as pristine as is commonly believed.

We have met the enemy and he is us. Pogo's philosophical observation perfectly describes the way IT and security professionals view their end users' attitude toward data security. An overwhelming 80 percent of corporate security professionals and IT administrators indicated in a recent survey that "end user carelessness" constituted the biggest security threat to their organizations.

Bring Your Own Device, or BYOD, is an established trend at many U.S. enterprises, and it's likely to continue to grow. Mobile marketing is an established channel through which many U.S. companies reach customers and prospective customers -- and it also is expected to grow. Is 2014 the year the twain will meet? Will marketers begin targeting consumers at work?

Rumors that Samsung will include iris-recognition technology in its forthcoming Galaxy S5 smartphone, widely expected to be launched in April, were given a boost on Thursday through an interview with Lee Young Hee, executive vice president of Samsung Mobile. People are "fanatical" about iris recognition technology and Samsung is "studying the possibility," Lee said.

The recent and rapid evolution of mobile and client management requirements has caused considerable complexity and confusion. Incomplete solutions and a lack of a clear pan-client strategy have hampered the move to broader mobile support at enterprises and mid-market companies alike. This state of muddled direction has put IT in a bind while frustrating users.

Smartphones hacked to run unauthorized programs or unlock features are being targeted by hackers and can pose a threat to enterprise networks, warned Marble Security. Modifying a smartphone to enable unauthorized behavior -- called "rooting" in the Android world and "jailbreaking" in the iOS realm -- makes the mobile vulnerable to infected jammer software, the firm said.

AT&T on Thursday announced new, lower-cost no-contract plans for customers who pay for their own devices. The new Mobile Share Value plans, which will be available beginning Dec. 8, will be open to new and existing wireless customers and will include a no-contract option that allows smartphone customers to save $15 per month by supplying their own device, AT&T said.

Dropbox began courting enterprise users with Wednesday's unveiling of Dropbox for Business. It's a paid cloud storage service that offers enterprise users the same features that have made Dropbox a popular file-hosting company among consumers, along with several security and efficiency-focused features tailored for businesses, such as sharing audit logs and efficiently transferring files.

The growing adoption of Bring Your Own Device policies by organizations of all sizes, across nearly every industry, has enabled corporate end-users and business units to more easily acquire apps tailored to their specific work requirements. This Bring Your Own Apps phenomenon, often referred to as the "consumerization of IT," has sparked a new round of debate among CIOs and other corporate executives.

Apple will likely debut a new iPad and possibly a new iPad mini at its Tuesday event in San Francisco. There is speculation about a new CPU, a keyboard case, better cameras, a splash of color, and the likelihood the new iPad will come preloaded with the buggy iOS 7. If the enterprise is looking for a little more business-friendliness from Apple, it may not find much gratification this time around.

The acquisition process for the latest innovation must keep pace with the ever changing IT landscape. In the public sector, that process has surfaced in acquisition vehicles related to cloud technology, data management and IT security. For the U.S. government, the GSA has become a focal point for developing contract vehicles and programs to facilitate the acquisition of innovative IT.

Google on Tuesday rolled out a feature for its recently launched Android Device Manager that lets users lock down a stolen Android device from anywhere, via the Web. "This is something that should be built into the OS and the platform because it's an inherent security feature," said tech analyst Rob Enderle. Google is late to the game in rolling out its remote lock capability.

Allowing workers to use personal phones and tablets to do their jobs has created security risks in the workplace, but those risks can be minimized if they're managed. What should such a risk management program do? "The first step is you have to protect the device," said IBM Application, Data and Mobile Security Director Caleb Barlow. That includes everything from provisioning to data wiping.

While so-called BYOD isn't necessarily new -- IT departments, after all, have been supporting mobile road warriors since the 1980s -- the rising tide of end users seeking the use and support of their own consumer devices is different. It's so different that IT departments are grasping for any standard or proven approaches that make BYOD access of enterprise resources both secure and reliable.

Samsung will bundle a forthcoming business suite from Lookout into its flailing Knox enterprise security solution for the Android platform. Knox, an end-to-end solution that provides security from the hardware all the way through to the application level, is Samsung's approach to the security threats posed by BYOD. The announcement is drawing mixed responses from security professionals.

If there's one attack surface that's attracting growing attention from digital marauders, it's a system's endpoints. With the proliferation of BYOD, securing connections can be a defender's nightmare. Endpoints have an allure for attackers because they offer multiple attack vectors, such as social engineering attacks, spearphishing, USB infection, and compromise of WiFi networks and routers.

At VMworld 2013, being held in San Francisco this week, VMware has been announcing a slew of incremental improvements and enhancements to its platform instead of unveiling striking new technologies or features -- perhaps an indication that the virtualization market is maturing. "Despite the conference's theme of 'Defy Convention,' virtualization is in fact the convention," said IDC's Al Gillen.

Business is increasingly taking place outside the boundaries of corporate data centers with data being moved to public clouds at an accelerating rate. Collaboration with outside partners, consultants and clients is becoming the norm. It even has a name: "open collaboration." Employees who have embraced the cloud are turning to low-end "consumer grade" file-sharing services for business activities.

Debunking myths around Big Data should be a first step to making better business decisions for improving data analysis and data management capabilities in a company. As the volume and purpose of data and business intelligence has dramatically shifted, older notions and misconceptions -- what amount to myths about data infrastructure -- need to updated and corrected, too.

BlackBerry 10 may have been the primary focus of its embattled maker in recent months, but on Tuesday the company revealed that its hopes for a turnaround don't rest solely on that new technology. Rather, BlackBerry announced the 9720, a handset that not only has the look and feel of its longstanding Curve line of devices but also runs its venerable BlackBerry 7 OS.

Content management systems like WordPress and Joombla have become popular targets for hackers in recent times because flaws in those systems can be leveraged for mischief across literally millions of websites. WordPress is running on some 73 million websites and Joomla some 35 million, so if you're a cybercriminal with a fresh vulnerability in your satchel, you can do some serious damage.

I've been charting the evolution of the corporate app store idea in this column for more than three years. Until recently, most of the focus has been on how various service providers and other institutions can establish app stores to resell apps to their customers. Now, enlightened CIOs are discovering the advantages of implementing internal app stores.

It's hardly surprising that Samsung is working on a brand-new smartphone -- it is a device manufacturer, after all. What is surprising is the form factor of this new device: It will reportedly be styled as a dual-display flip phone -- similar, in other words, to the many other clamshell devices that saturated the market before smartphones took over.