Smartphones have fast become the most personable belonging in the history of technology. They are often within a meter of their owners 24 hours a day.
Smartphones are now an essential tool in all sections of society, from top government officials to businesses and consumers. They are famous for their versatility – in a single day a smartphone may be a contactless wallet, a barcode reader, a satellite navigation system, an email or social network client, a WiFi hotspot, an extension of business processes (access to corporate ERP, CRM, SharePoint etc) in addition to the traditional use of making a phone call.
Smartphone users frequently cross-over from one usage scenario to another. This in itself has important implications for the management of security risks for organisations. For example, a business smartphone with sensitive client data may be used for personal social networking during weekends and for handling sensitive email and access to corporate systems on working days.
Smartphones often contain valuable personal information such as credit card data, bank account numbers, passwords, contact data, and so on. They also often contain corporate emails and documents and may contain sensitive corporate data. Because they are carried around all the time and are always available, they have become the primary repository of personal and business data.
This has driven the take up of Smartphone’s in businesses dramatically. Whilst the majority of society see the benefits they bring, there are those in a business who are struggling with supporting the growth of these devices – the IT department.
Every brand of smartphone can have a different operating system and different versions, making it almost impossible for an IT department to manage and maintain all the devices with the same level of security.
In simple terms, imagine a person that had to be able to speak 5 or more different languages fluently and also be able to understand all the different dialects of those languages and you may begin to understand the challenges faced by companies in securing these tools of trade.
Due to the explosion of smartphones and tablets, companies have now had to become experts in mobility and mobile apps, which in many cases may result in the focus of a company’s core business being affected.
In addition to this, the trend from overseas is companies supporting a BYO policy for employees, meaning that these devices are no longer in full control of the IT department. This complicates the ability to enforce security policies that are in line with the companies policies.
If managing smartphones and tablets are keeping you awake at night, then consider a platform approach to securing these devices via a Mobile Device Management (MDM) solution.
MDM’s provide a single console for fast access to critical business information and makes it easy to perform complex device management tasks delivering high level views of your entire fleet of mobile devices, with the ability to drill down to the individual device level.
MDM’s allow you to manage and deliver governance to any mobile device, on any carrier or network, anywhere in the world.
With a MDM platform, you can secure, monitor, manage your entire mobile fleet. This includes features such as provisioning and enrolments, access to apps, profiles settings, VPN access, inventory and asset management, remote lock and wipe, lockdowns, password and encryption policies, GPS and mapping, exception notification and the list goes on.
Many of the companies that offer these platforms (Air-Watch, Mobile Iron, Tangoe, Sybase etc), provide options from web based hosted consoles to on premise server solution.
They simplify managing mobility, delivering the ability to secure, monitor, manage and support entire fleets of mobile assets. They are usually simple to deploy, use and scale within your organisation.
There is no industry standard for iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, and Symbian platforms and the reality is that this is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.
If you are looking to take back control of your assets, minimise the impact of resources to manage and maintain these assets and get back to your core business, then take the time to investigate the power of MDM’s and the benefits they can deliver to your business.
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