Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) Certification Program
Announced last week, this has been a long time coming in my mind. The mobile device space has become increasing confusing and an overall lack of support for many features until you dig deeper and find vendor details. It has been hard to find out what each device supports before you connect them to your company’s Exchange. This has been especially true on the many Android flavors and devices now available and being released at a very fast pace. Many companies are now seeking to change their mobile device policies, remain somewhat secure, and allow users to connect their personal owned devices.
For additional information on EAS support on mobile devices take a peak at my posting from last month here. It contains a few good links on EAS support on certain platform levels.
At this time the Microsoft certification or logo requirements are not too broad, and mainly hit the common security settings and features:
Program Requirements:
- Must be current Exchange ActiveSync licensee (most OEMs and some software vendors)
- Use Exchange ActiveSync v14 (Exchange 2010) or later
- Direct Push email, contacts & calendar
- Accept, Decline & Tentatively Accept meetings
- Rich formatted email (HTML)
- Reply/Forward state on email
- GAL Lookup
- Autodiscover
- ABQ strings provided: device type and device model
- Remote Wipe
- Password Required
- Minimum Password Length
- Timeout without User Input
- Number of Failed Attempts
It appears that the Apple and some Nokia (and of course the current Microsoft flavors) devices have already been approved.
It will be interesting to see how this is picked up by the OEMs and mobile operators. I would like to see additional security features, such as encryption and deactivation of specific features etc. make the list. Although if such additional certification “tiers” are later introduced in the near future many devices might not make the list. :-)
Source: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/gg187968.aspx,
http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2011/04/13/announcing-the-exchange-activesync-logo-program.aspx
Marco..