You can’t say you haven’t been warned if you are part of Corporate America. Whether or not you recognize or sanction the Apple iPad device as a legitimate business tool, many workers will soon have them in hand and will be invading your business. Now is the time to begin considering how to plan to address assimilating the primarily consumer-oriented tablet into your business environment.

During the initial launch of the iPhone in 2007, it was understandable that businesses and IT administrators were all caught off guard by the user demand to connect the smartphone with work. Businesses heavily relied on professional smartphones built on the BlackBerry or Windows Mobile operating systems (and still do in many cases.) Consuer gadgets from Apple were not expected so it simply made sense for companies to just ban the iPhone. That didn’t go so well though with many businesses as the iPhone gained popularity.

The truth is that the iPhone upset the natural order and shifted the corporate culture in an unexpected direction. The “users” demanding iPhone integration often had the word “chief” at the beginning of their title. The line between a corporate tool and consumer gadget grew thin to the point where it was almost erased in many cases.

While corporate technical environment has reluctantly accepted the iPhone, the relationship has issues, and the same issues foreshadow the issues you can expect on the iPad. iPhone present the greatest smartphone security risk to the enterprise. According to a recent survey from nCircle (a network security and compliance auditing firm.) The online survey of 257 security professionals, conducted between February 4 and March 12, 2010, found that 57% of them believe that the iPhone is the smartphone that represents the greatest security risk. The survey also found that 42% have no corporate smartphone security policy, and that 35% of those that do have a policy, don’t enforce it.

Apparently the perception of the iPhone being a high security risk is a valid one. Just this past week, two security researchers succeeded in hacking and compromising a fully-updated iPhone 3GS in under two minutes to win the 2010 Pwn2Own contest and capture the $15,000 prize.

“The general consensus is that Apple continues to do only the absolute minimum to address enterprise security and supportability requirements,” noted Andrew Storms, Director of Security Operations for nCircle. “We haven’t seen any new enterprise iPhone security features from Apple since the summer of 2009 when they introduced their new hardware level encryption, which was almost immediately subverted. This is not the kind of behavior security professionals want to see in vendors.”

This doesn’t look good for the upcoming iPad invasion. While Apple has mainly targeted the iPad primarily as a media consumption gadget, a recent survey shows that users have a different purpose in mind. A Zogby International poll commissioned by Sybase as “uncovered that the number one reason U.S consumers would use a device such as the Apple iPad is for working on the go.” Another key finding of the survey is that “three-quarters of smartphone users surveyed believe that smartphones and forthcoming devices like the iPad make people more productive at work, with one-third of those feeling that productivity impact is significant.”

If you’re on the corporate end of the whole ordeal, don’t make the mistake of thinking that you can simply just ban the iPad from your business environment. Instead, develop policies and procedures that address the rules of engagement for integrating the iPad with your network resources. As you develop the policies, keep in mind that the iPad is unique in that it delivers notebook-like functionality on a smartphone OS platform. That may confuse things as you determine which category it falls under, the computer usage and security policies or the smartphone usage and security policies. Of course, on the other end, if you don’t actually have any such established policies, now is your opportunity to create a policy that simply addresses mobile devices as a whole – regardless of whether it’s a netbook, notebook, smartbook, smartphone, or tablet.

Make sure that the policy you create accounts for allowing or denying the storage of confidential or sensitive information on the iPad, or how email, instant messaging, and other communications conducted through the iPad fit within archiving and compliance requirements. And remember, the iPhone OS platform that the iPad runs on was the same one just hacked under two minutes.