This article draws to a conclusion the Cordless Consultants top ten watch list for 2011-12 and soon we’ll be giving you our ones to watch for the coming year.

Some of our top 10 have happened with gusto (tablets and 3D) and some haven’t quite made it yet (telepresence robots & fuel cells).

Others will certainly be coming in a big way in 2012 - Near Field Communication (NFC) and a desktop experience delivered to a mobile phone.  Phones will begin to provide all the functionality that’s needed and so will start to replace laptops and tablets.  They will also start to replace bank cards and be used to pay for things such as a latte in the local coffee shop using NFC chips – but more on these in a future article.

So coming back to the here and now, whilst on the whole we can’t yet pay by phone, we do still need to access data and transfer files from all sorts of locations. For many that means reliance on a USB flash drive and this presents a business and security risk.

In this age of freedom of information requests, we know that since 1998 the Government has lost or had stolen over 1000 laptops. I don’t believe government employees are any more careless than staff from any other sector so it’s safe to assume that many laptops go missing each year. USB drives can hold 1000s of files, are cheaper and smaller than laptops, and so likely go missing even more often. If we’re honest, we all “have a friend” who’s lost at least one.

One possible solution is a product that seems to have come straight from an episode of Mission Impossible. A secure USB flash drive that requires dual fingerprint biometric authentication for access and that self-destructs if it’s tampered with is available from RiTech. Granted it costs more than just a few pounds but it certainly offers a solution to secure data transfer.

Another approach to mitigating this risk is never letting the data in question leave a secure data centre.  With this in mind, perhaps smartphones that build on premise of the Motorola Atrix and allow secure virtual access to data via platforms such as Citrix are the answer.  Certainly, other than the embarrassment and cost associated, losing a laptop or flash drive shouldn’t be the headline grabbing story it once was.

So here we end our top 10 for 2011/2012 and prepare for our series for the coming year.  you’ll see our top 10 on your screens very soon.