Video series based on Trend Micro session* at the Mobile World Congress 2012.
PREVIOUS: Day 3 – BYOD challenges for corporate IT
[…] What are the top concerns? So when we ask to IT managers: “in approaching BYOD, in approaching consumerization, what is your number one concern?” Constantly, every single time we ask, security seems to be the number one concern.
Data shows that Security (64%) and data loss (59%) remain top concerns for most companies allowing employees to bring their personal devices in the workplace. Compliance and legal implications are greater concern in the U.S. and Japan than in Germany. To reduce security risks and to lower management costs, 79% of respondents require employees to install mobile security solutions on their personal mobile devices. 69% of respondents agreed that mobile device security is a key component in protecting their IT environments from employee-owned mobile devices while 71% of respondents consider a combination of mobile security and mobile device management to be the most effective.
The analysis of the mobile security experts reveals that today’s mobile platforms widely differ in terms of security and manageability capabilities. As a group, modern mobile platforms provide substantially better security than traditional desktop operating systems when it comes to built-in security mechanisms, authentication and data protection; even though they are vulnerable to attacks that don’t affect desktop PCs. Application security, device management and corporate email support are somehow sufficient although offer room for improvement. The feature sets that IT managers should give high consideration to include security certifications, device firewall and support for virtualization, which is largely still missing.
NEXT: The Consumerization University – Day 5: Embrace is the right approach for BYOD
* Mobile Security Forum: “Consumer Mobile Technology in the Enterprise: A Leap of Faith?”
An increasing number of companies are opening corporate networks and data to consumer mobile devices, as employees demand to bring their own smartphones and tablets to work. However, consumer mobile technology is generally not as secure and manageable as required by the enterprise. And too many companies make the mistake of trying to stop the influx of consumer IT. What new mobile platforms will your organization contend with? What built-in security models do they provide? What vulnerabilities are they exposed to? How rigorous is the scrutiny of the official application markets? Is the corporate data stored in these devices safe? In this series, leading mobile security experts answer these questions and, more importantly, reveal solutions and best practices for your company to safely embrace consumer mobile technology in the enterprise.
