Starting from improving operational efficiency, generating a higher rate of revenues to enhancing the customer experience, the explosive growth in enterprise mobile technology has impacted every sphere of the business landscape. So, how does enterprise mobility fit into any business plan? Enterprise mobility improves productivity by providing key information in real-time while focusing on customer experience, productivity, and responsiveness.
An Agile Workplace Mobility
Underpinned by the concept of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), enterprise mobility helps businesses to connect in real-time with customers, enabling them to provide personalized service and has resulted in boosting customer experience. This has also enabled decisions or policymakers to communicate approvals, submittals, or complete any task that needs to be completed in a time-efficient manner.
However, while enterprise mobility offers a springboard to go beyond boundaries and challenge the status quo, it also brings a new wave of potential threats. Finding the balance between maximum mobility and maximum security is one of the emerging challenges faced by many companies.
Mobile Device Management; A Step Close to Securing Data
According to a study conducted by Forbes, the Bring Your Own Device will surpass 330 billion Euros buy the year 2020. People are bringing their own smartphones to the office instead of using multiple devices at work and their private lives. However, if these devices are not managed in a safe and structured way, a breach of corporate data will be a potential threat. Hence, there is a need for employees to be able to safely separate their private lives from confidential company information is crucial. Data breaches can be fatal in terms of costs and reputation making Mobile Device Management a topical issue.
Hence, any company that wants to prevent data leaks needs to ensure that it has a well-defined Mobile Device Management plan. For example, MDM allows one to set up a password-protected secure area in which one can store business files. Hence, any data that comes into this sandbox is entitled and cannot be forwarded or downloaded. This sandbox can also be remotely wiped clean in the event of loss or theft without disturbing any personal data of the employee.
However, the point to be noted here is that MDM solutions are not designed to manage data. It requires a different set of tools and procedures for it, which comes under the endpoint of the tool Data Loss protection (DLP). Here, MDM manages the device and DLP works on managing data. This tool provides rigorous control over who can access what data and what they can do with the data they have. Now employing MDM will demand one to broaden the possibility of including endpoint management. Furthermore, this tool gathers information about each client that may include hardware, operating systems configuration data, and the status of installed applications. It now has intelligent agents on the endpoint, enabling organizations to get a fine-grained view of how connected devices are being used.
Can Data Be Secured?
But, the actual concern here is that enterprise mobility technologies solely cannot the data security problem. One must follow procedures, policies and develop a culture that ensures data protection. For example if any company follows BYOD program, they can follow written policy that specifies what information can and can’t be downloaded on personal devices. Any employee who uses a personal mobile device for work must read and sign this written policy. This makes us understand that DLP is useless without any classification system; hence, companies can formulate a written policy that allows employees to monitor the data they download or read.
However, there is still no inclusive solution that monitors the data that employees store on their mobile devices. Hence, enterprise mobility services providers are offering innovative solutions to control data stored or used by employees along with other services.
