Everything You Have Been Told About Mobility is Wrong - Myth #2

Traditional mobile device management is all you need for BYOD

It’s no secret that security is a key IT concern when it comes to Bring Your Own Device initiatives. In a recent Dell survey, 44 percent of respondents said that instituting policies for BYOD security is critical for preventing security breaches.

If a security breach occurs, the stakes can be high. Highly regulated companies can face fines, plus lose accreditation and customer trust. In manufacturing and energy sectors, intrusions can not only cause big disruptions to production, but also endanger worker safety.

But providing BYOD security isn’t easy. IT staff have to manage and secure all sorts of diverse devices with most of them outside of IT’s physical reach. If that wasn’t enough, security and device management policies can’t restrict usability and information access too much. Otherwise users will seek workarounds, complicating IT’s job even more.

Often the first step in addressing BYOD security is deploying a mobile device management (MDM) solution. MDM does enable IT to mitigate some threats. For example, they can wipe a user’s lost or stolen device or a device that is acting “suspiciously.”

However, let’s look at the two ways in which traditional MDM can fall short. First is the problem of visibility. What data have user devices accessed? Where does it go? Is it being put in free file-sharing platforms? Are downloaded consumer apps and games accessing company data on users’ devices?

These questions point to issues that are bigger than IT may realize. For example, Gartner predicts that, by 2017, an estimated 75 percent of mobile security breaches will be the result of mobile application misconfiguration, such as the misuse of personal cloud services to share enterprise data. In addition, as attacks on mobile devices mature, Gartner also predicts that in this same time frame the focus of endpoint breaches will shift to tablets and smartphones.

While whitelisting or blacklisting applications may have worked not long ago to help limit this kind of exposure, they’re hardly feasible tactics today with the millions of applications now available for smartphones and tablets.

The second problem is one of complexity. How can IT cost-effectively manage the wide range of tablets, smartphones, cloud clients, laptops and desktops available today?

One way is to limit BYOD and the devices or applications they support. But this can send users and line-of-business owners to seek workarounds. Gartner forecasts that by 2016, 20 percent of enterprise BYOD programs will fail due to overly restrictive MDM measures.[1]

On the flipside, no matter how secure a BYOD solution is, users won’t adopt it if it seems to threaten their personal privacy or isn’t easy to use.. More and more, employees today are demanding solutions that isolate personal data from business data, so that IT cannot access personal content and applications.

So with concerns on data loss protection, management complexity and end-user privacy all too prevalent, it is clear that MDM’s aren’t enough for a modern BYOD program. That’s why Dell designed and engineered Mobility Management solutions as a flexible, comprehensive way to securely manage all endpoints — including smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktops — plus provide secure, encrypted workspaces on them. Its protection comprises four security layers:

• Secure, encrypted workspaces on devices, to ensure that applications outside those workspaces cannot read data inside them. Also, one device’s disk image can’t be moved to another device.
• Data-loss protection, to keep corporate data in a device’s secure workspace and block personal applications from cutting, copying or pasting it.
• Built-in remote access, to securely connect workspaces with enterprise networks via existing VPNs.
• Firewall compatibility, to work with existing firewalls, enhance protection and prevent unauthorized apps outside the secure workspace from accessing a device’s enterprise network.

By providing users with a secure, encrypted workspace, the IT groups can rest assured that their enterprises have sufficient security. Users will see just an easy-to-use, noninvasive app that requires only a simple download for them to have access to all their business-productivity tools.

They’ll also know that IT can’t peek into their devices — only the workspace IT manages. They can be sure their privacy isn’t violated and personal data isn’t compromised, especially if a remote wipe must occur, which takes place only inside the workspace.

Finally, Dell eases complexity with a centralized console to manage all enterprise endpoints and secure workspaces. IT doesn’t have to deal with support personnel from all kinds of vendors. It can even offload employee support to Dell’s user self-service. Dell is the complete enterprise mobility management solution for BYOD that IT has long needed, and it comes in one package from one enterprise mobility partner, Dell.

[1] IBID