Mobile devices become critical business tools

While difficulties remain, enterprises are embracing mobile technologies as business tools. According to the Symantec 2012 "State of Mobility Survey," there has been a "global tipping point in mobility adoption". It found that 71% of respondents are in discussion on deploying custom mobile applications and a third are either currently implementing or have already implemented custom mobile applications.

Difficulties remain though, despite the adoption rates, as almost half (48%) of respondents indicated that mobility was still "somewhat to extremely challenging," with 41% indicating that mobile devices were among the top three IT risks. According to Symantec, "this increased pain level indicates the transition from small pilots and tactical implementations, where policies are often bypassed and exceptions are made, to enterprise-wide deployments where policy standards across a larger scale introduce greater complexity.

"This also suggests that many implementations are not yet taking sufficient advantage of their existing enterprise systems and processes, which would alleviate much of the pain and cost that comes with larger scale and resource duplication."

Carried out among more than 6,000 organisations from 43 countries, the survey highlights the challenges organisations must deal with in balancing the mobility demands and opportunities with the potential risks.

The survey reports that despite high initial expectations, mobile technologies seem to be delivering on their initial promise. It says that "for the smartphones and tablets currently in use, 70% of those surveyed expected to see increased employee productivity, yet 77% actually saw productivity gains after implementing". Perhaps the greatest indicator of enterprise acceptance of mobile technologies is the fact that 59% of respondents said that they were relying on mobile devices for line of business applications.

"We are impressed by the pace of mobile application adoption within organisations," said CJ Desai, senior vice president, Endpoint and Mobility Group, Symantec. "This cultural change from refusing mobile devices not long ago, to actively distributing and developing mobile applications, has introduced a new set of challenges and complexities for IT staff. Encouragingly, from a security perspective, a majority of organisations are thinking beyond the simple case of lost or stolen mobile phones."

For those organisations that are embracing mobiles technologies, Symantec offers a number of recommendations.

Organisations that choose to embrace mobility, without compromising on security, the company advises, are most likely to improve business processes and achieve productivity gains. To this end, organisations should consider developing a mobile strategy that defines the organisation’s mobile culture and aligns with their security risk tolerance.

Enable broadly: Mobility offers tremendous opportunities for organisations of all sizes. Explore how you can take advantage of mobility and develop a phased approach to build an ecosystem that supports your plan. To get the most from mobile advances plan for line of business mobile applications that are of mainstream use. Employees will use mobile devices for business one way or another-make it on your terms.

Think strategically:  Build a realistic assessment of the ultimate scale of your mobile business plan and its impact on your infrastructure. Think beyond email. Explore all of the mobile opportunities that can be introduced and understand the risks and threats that need to be mitigated. As you plan, take a cross-functional approach to securing sensitive data no matter where it might end up.

Manage efficiently: Mobile devices are legitimate endpoints that require the same attention given to traditional PCs. Many of the processes, policies, education and technologies that are leveraged for desktops and laptops are also applicable to mobile platforms. So the management of mobile devices should be integrated into the overall IT management framework and administered in the same way – ideally using compatible solutions and unified policies. This creates operational efficiencies and lowers the total cost of ownership.

Enforce Appropriately: As more employees connect their personal devices to the corporate network, organisations need to modify their acceptable usage policies to accommodate both corporate-owned and personally-owned devices.  Management and security levers will need to differ based on ownership of the device and the associated controls that the organisation requires. Employees will continue to add devices to the corporate network to make their jobs more efficient and enjoyable so organisations must plan for this legally, operationally and culturally.

Secure comprehensively: Look beyond basic password, wipe and application blocking policies. Focus on the information and where it is viewed, transmitted and stored. Integrating with existing data loss prevention, encryption and authentication policies will ensure consistent corporate and regulatory compliance.

TechCentral Reporters

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