Interested in how to enable data protection on your iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad? The good news is that if you use a passcode, iOS 4 data protections protects the hardware encryption keys on your device, making email, attachments, and 3rd party apps (if they enable it) much more secure. The bad news is, if you updated your iPhone 3GS, iPod touch 3, or original iPad from iOS 3 to iOS 4, data protection might not have been turned on even with the passcode. Not to worry, we’ll walk you through all the possibilities, after the break!

[Apple KB via TidBITS]

How to set a passcode

If you haven’t got a passcode lock set up on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad, that’s the place to start.

• How to set up a passcode lock

Bonus Tip: You can set your passcode lock to automatically erase your device after 10 failed attempts. That’s great if you ever lose your device but if you have young children who can get ahold of it, you might find yourself restoring your wiped device with frustrating frequency. Security is constantly at war with convenience, make your choice.

How to set a stronger passcode

With iOS 4 you can switch the passcode from simple 4-digit numeric to full on alphanumeric for seriously stronger protection.

• From the Settings: General: Passcode Lock screen…
• Switch the Simple Passcode toggle to OFF
• Enter your current 4-digit numeric passcode to verify
• Enter a new, strong alphanumeric passcode

A combination of numbers, letters, and symbols is good, pseudorandom is even better but the difficulty in remembering it probably outweighs any benefit.

How to check for data protection

Now that your passcode is enabled, check to make sure you have data protection on. (It should be on by default for all iPhone 4, iPod touch 4, and iPad 2 devices, but if you updated your iPhone 3GS, iPod touch 3, or original iPad from iOS 3 to iOS 4 it might not be.)

• From the Settings: General: Passcode Lock screen…
• Scroll down to the very bottom and look for the text “Data protection is enabled”

If it’s there, you’re good to go. If not, keep reading!

How to enable data protection if it’s not on by default

Remember, this is only for iPhone 3GS (2009), iPod touch 3 (2009), and original iPad (2010) if “Data protection enabled” isn’t showing up on the Settings screen.

• Restore your device from backup

Make sure you backup your device before restoring, then choose restore from backup to get all your data back onto your device. Once it’s done, sync and then check the Setting screen again to make sure data protection is now enabled.

Phew!

If you have any questions or any other data protection tips, leave them in the comments!

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The shinobi-smart folks over at 9to5mac have posted a way for iPhone and iPod touch users to switch away from the retro 4 number pin passcodes that Apple implements, and into a secure alpha-numeric key:

We’ve built a profile from Apple’s corporate developement kit that allows alphanumeric passcodes. All you have to do is open this link (On your iDevice only!) and you will be prompted to pick a new passcode. You will be required to make a passcode with a mix of letters and numbers and you cannot put numbers in a consecutive order. For example you cannot choose “max1234″ you would have to do something such as “max2746.” If you ever want to remove this feature simply go to Settings/General/Profiles/9to5mac/ then click remove and confirm. Then change your code back to something numeric.

You can grab the link from their site (above), and they remind you they’re not responsible for you putting a hyper-secure passcode in place… then forgetting it. If you do give it a try, let us know how it works for you!

TidBITS has an interesting write-up on the various security features of iPhone 3.0 in general, and the 256-bit AES hardware encryption of iPhone 3GS in particular, and how combined together:

consumers can now experience enterprise-class security.

They cover passcode lock, data erase, remote wipe, lack of insecure external data cards, frequent and easy to install software updates/security patches, and (encrypted) backups that can restore your data if your device is accidentally wiped. Definitely worth a read if you tend towards the security conscious.

It’s that time of the week where we bring some of the discussions from the forums to the main page.

Big reminder to everyone, the voting for the latest TiPb AT WORK Contest ends tomorrow! This weeks contest, to do/task apps! Time is short so go get your vote on now!

Are you one of those people who is all about security? Well we want to know how many of you actually use the passcode lock on your iPhones? Chime in on his thread! I recently switched from MobileMe to a Exchange account and was personally interested in the following thread. Pascalcheck had a good question regarding Exchange with his contacts and calendar events. Rene was super quick to jump in and help out!.

A lot has been said about jailbreaking lately, and a lot of questions are being asked… so if you have questions and need answers please check out the following two forums – Jailbreak Central (for anything related to jailbreaking) and iPhone Jailbreak Apps.

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