I'm trying to reuse some old kit, how green am I

We've got to scan all our sites for rogue wifi to meet the PCIDSS standards. We've loads of sites over a wide area and feck all resources (people or cash) to do this once never mind quarterly.

I came up with an idea to send out wifi capable phones in the internal mail and get someone in the local site to do a quick scan. I've rescued some older smartphones from the skip to use.

I've a bunch of IPAQ data messenger phones. They're crap even compared to my cheepo android but they're free.

I've got a wifi scanner on them that does what I need, WiFiFoFum but the Mobile PC interface to get to it is awful.

I need to get this totally as simple as possible. As simple as the people who will be using them.

I've tried to get some skins on the phone and various launcher apps but they don't seem to work. I'm assuming it's because the phone is running WM6.1 not 6.5.

Also because it was such an unpopular model there is nothing much on XDA to use, no custom ROMs or even a 6.5 ROM.

I really just want to put one link, preferably a big icon, on the today screen so all the user had to do is click it and wander about for 10min.

Alternatively if I could get the app to fire when the phone boots that would do.

Any ideas?

If they are windows Mobil based you can create a shortcut and copy that to the windows/startup folder and will auto execute. You can do that with active sync and the phones connected as guest.

Ah cool. I didn't know there was a startup folder.

At the moment I've put on MMApplauncher to give some big icons which is better but just running the app is better. Ta.

One thing to bear in mind is that your old phones are probably only 2.4GHz (802.11b and 802.11g) compatible. So 802.11a rogue networks definitely wouldn't show up, and probably not 802.11n either (although one form of the 11n specs is on the same 2.4GHz band as b/g so it may be that you can see the network but not connect). Dual band routers/APs are more common nowadays than they used to be, so if you wanted to be fully compliant I would be trying to scan both bands.

Great idea, don't get me wrong, but would hate for it to fail and you get in trouble because it's not actually achieving what you need to retain your PCIDSS compliance

@rse! You're right they only do b,g. Hadn't crossed my mind.

These will do for a trial run anyway. If it works in principle then possibly they might be up for buying a few cheap newer phones that'll cover the whole spectrum.

Agreed, it'll be good enough to prove the concept works, and tbh it's likely that any rogues you see WILL be 2.4GHz 802.11g anyway as it still seems the most common until ISPs start shipping .11n routers. But I know "likely" isn't going to be good enough for your security compliance