The smartphone market is the tech hotbed of activity these days, but no new entry into the market’s made anything close to the iPhone’s impact over the past couple of years. In fact, the folks over at eWeek are warning IT pros to prepare for the unit’s ultimate domination.

In a recent story on preparing for the iPhone “ubiquity,” there were plenty of warnings about how to prepare for the tsunami of demand for the phone once it’s untethered from its lone carrier here in the United States and in countries like Germany and the U.K., which are the lone European locales where only one cell phone company can offer the phone.

But among the nearly dozen steps being recommended, probably the most important for IT managers is the advice on security for the phones.

The iPhone was introduced first as a consumer device, a unit that was primarily for personal use and the social networking that’s become overwhelmingly popular in the past couple of years.

The question: Did social networking take off because of the iPhone or did the iPhone achieve its iconic status because of the popularity of social networking?

In the end, it probably doesn’t matter. What’s important is that any company that decides the iPhone will be its smartphone of choice needs to create an airtight security policy that will protect important company data. Because iPhone users have a choice of more than 85,000 apps they can add to their phone, the unit could be a security nightmare waiting to happen.

Protecting a company’s assets and data will be the job of IT. The cost of a security leak with one of these phones could be astronomical.

If you thought a lost laptop was a disaster waiting to happen, just wait until all your users are sending and receiving all their company e-mail — with attachments — on an iPhone.

Tags: applications, carrier, eWeek, iphone, security, smartphone