How to manage enterprise mobility is one of the thorniest issues facing IT departments in 2016. With mobile devices becoming ever more ubiquitous, there is no doubting the positive effects of the PCs in our pockets.
But the question remains how best to manage the security implications of having corporate data extend out onto devices that are potentially outside the control of the IT department? Is it best to manage the devices themselves, the apps that run on them or the content the user consumes?
Or perhaps the best solution is some combination of all three?
Shifting focus
“In some cases, yes, but really it’s about the first two and content is starting to figure in the mix even more strongly,” said John Delaney, IDC’s associate vice president for European mobility.
“The interesting thing about what’s happening is the shift over the past few years from devices as the primary focus through to where we are now with applications as the primary focus. But already things are starting to shift towards content as a new primary focus.”
“When you think about it, it’s really been content all along because even in the devices era, the devices themselves were not really what enterprises wanted to protect. If you lose a phone in the back of the cab you’ve lost something that costs a couple of hundred dollars, or maybe a bit more, but it’s not the end of the world.”
What companies are really concerned about is the fact that corporate data on those devices can find its way into the wild. That is where mobile device management (MDM) comes into its own, with the valuable ability to remotely lock and wipe devices if they go missing, along with the ability to partition a device so that it has some separation between personal and corporate content.
Liability managed
“MDM allows you to manage liability up to the application level, where you might want to make it so that certain applications won’t run unless they’re connected to a virtual private network (VPN) on the device. Or you might want to limit the ability to copy and paste content from one application into another,” said Delaney.
“Again, even in the application management era, really the thing that people are most focused on managing is the content. And as a result perception is now starting to take hold that actually if you manage the content explicitly, there’s not an awful lot else you need to do.”
According to Delaney it is still important to have some insurance policies for devices — the need to manage device and applications does not go away just because an organisation focuses on content security.
“But if you start with the content then you actually do most of what you need before you’ve got any further,” he said.
Preferable approach
Part of the reason why this is a preferable approach is that most people using mobile devices tend to use multiple such devices.
“They don’t replace a laptop with a smart phone or a tablet — they use both of them and they probably use other devices as well. The problem then of course is if you’ve got local storage content then increasingly you’re going to find the content you need isn’t on the device you’ve got with you. So as mobile device usage becomes more prevalent things tend naturally to gravitate towards the cloud, mainly for that reason.”
“Otherwise you find yourself without access to things that you need when you need them. That said, there’s quite a lot of mobility that’s still based around local storage in execution, not least because of course we’re not quite there yet as far as ubiquitous, reliable, wide area connectivity is concerned.”
Accelerating pace
Other industry observers agree that the pace of change surrounding mobility is overall continuing to accelerate. According to Accenture’s head of digital Vicky Goldophin, the mobile sector is showing no signs of slowing down anytime soon.
“I don’t think we’ve seen any slow-down or any change in the type of challenges that are actually making or influencing the way we need to manage our devices or the content on those devices,” she said.
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