Don’t Get Overwhelmed by Mobility You May Know More than You Think

Enterprise mobility is having a huge impact on organizations across the board. They are seeing the benefits in productivity, communication and access to information and are scrambling to provide employees with devices or allow for Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). Organization and their IT departments may be in a tizzy trying to wrap their heads around strategy and policy development needed to take full advantage of this mobility while maintaining network integrity and information security. A piece written by Technology Spectator suggests that those IT departments might want to take a deep breath, a step back and realize that these new mobility initiatives and security measures that need to be taken may not be all that foreign.

While the technology may be new and the risk that they present may increase the premise of securing network access and corporate information is nothing new to IT department. Technology Spectator writes that, “For years, IT managers have had to deal with the threat of rogue or uninvited devices compromising their systems and network architecture.” They suggest that BYOD programs make mobile devices the “new” faulty network hub, rogue access point and compromised USB memory stick that have needed to be dealt with in the past. IT departments need to understand that as they have done in the past with those security issues, mobile devices and the risks they present can be secured as well as long as the right solutions and steps are taken.

In reference to the right solutions and steps they say that IT departments need to focus on Mobile Device Management (MDM) implementation and strategy. Again, don’t let yourself become overwhelmed by new solutions and security measures, and bring it back to the basics of any IT security processes you have applied in the past. Initially IT should focus on the fundamentals of assessment, analysis and active response of these new employee owned devices. “By applying a basic approach to logging, tracking and monitoring device usage, IT professionals will be able to maintain the same level of vigilance which they’d apply to any other device in the organisation, without becoming overwhelmed by the ostensible complexity of mobility’s multiple facets.” It is important to point out as mobility strategies grow and mobile devices become more involved in day to day business processes more detail and expertise may be required, but this simplified approach will allow you to get started in a controlled manner.  

Click here to read the full Technology Spectator article and for more advice on tackling your mobility and MDM strategies.