In the early 2000s, companies handed out BlackBerrys like they were ballpoint pens. If you were a worker going mobile, you were going to do it on your employer's terms, with a device owned by the company and access to any corporate data dictated by the in-house IT manager. That made keeping tabs on business mobile devices easy.
But this homogeneous network, with only corporate-issued devices, is already a relic. Employees use all manner of personal mobile devices to access corporate data when they're out and about, says Jeff Wilson, principal analyst for security at Infonetics Research.
“You may see companies enabling employees on iPhones for corporate access ... for a lot of people it may not be too difficult to then figure out how to configure their personal iPad for access, too,” Mr. Wilson says.
The possibility that your employees might have a business phone, a personal phone and perhaps a personal tablet, all carrying business data, makes them harder to manage – and it also makes it harder to protect against security threats. In this newly complex environment, third-party management may be the answer.
Companies such as McAfee, Symantec, Zenprise and MobileIron can offer solutions such as automatic firmware updates, diagnostics, data backup and restoration, scans for security threats and the particularly valuable ability to remotely lock and wipe data from a phone if it is lost or stolen. Costs vary and are usually based on the number of devices within a business.
That number is not always easy to determine, Mr. Wilson says, noting, “A lot of SMBs have an inventory challenge. The first thing they need to do is figure out how many devices are accessing their corporate info – which phones and tablets, and the operating systems they use. Once you get a handle on what devices are connecting, you can develop policies to deal with them.”
One way to do that is to deploy a network access controller, “a box that intercepts traffic information and tells you who's connecting, what device types [they are using], what their authentication credentials are and if they have virus software,” Mr. Wilson says.
Mobile viruses were unheard of a few years ago, but such threats are becoming more common, and the booming market for apps presents other dangers. Even if your business hasn't seen that type of threat yet, having a device lost or stolen just once may provide reason enough to invest in remote management, especially if that device contains sensitive corporate data.
“For a small business,” Wilson says, “that may be the first time you ask yourself, ‘What do I have on these devices and what is it worth? Is changing credentials enough, or do I have to wipe it?’”
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