Mobile technology has quickly become a staple in the business world, even becoming a major player in business models. With this new technology comes new benefits and new problems. One of the biggest problems companies are faced with is security issues. Companies can prevent most if not all of these security problems by coming up with and instituting a mobile device management strategy or MDM. While an MDM helps cover your business from fraud, theft, and leaks of confidential information it can sometime leave your employees feeling a little suffocated. Don’t worry; there is a way to institute a safe MDM without hurting your business, IT department, or other employees.
At the heart of the matter is the inability of employees to separate the “identities” of their work and personal areas of their smart phones. This becomes a problem for the employee who doesn’t want all of their personal information erased if they absent mindedly leave their phone in the subway. They don’t want basic functions of their phone like taking a picture to be password protected. Employees want their privacy and don’t want IT to see what they are doing on their own time. Most importantly they do not want critical functions like SMS and applications to be blocked if IT deems them as risky. All of these functions keep the business protected but leave employees feeling as though they are prisoners of their own phones.
New options from major mobile characters AT&T and Verizon are helping to keep everyone happy. These companies are literally separating the work and private identities of these phones. AT&T is doing this in partnership with a company call Enterproid who is tackling the issue at the application level. Since Enterproid’s technology is an app there is no risk of problems with your OS or device firmware. IT sets up a work profile that they can use to monitor and secure users’ business profiles while leaving the settings of personal profiles completely up to the user. Verizon took a different approach partnering with VMware. VMware offers two separate virtual operating systems on a single device.
Both of these options are designed to be delivered through cloud services so your IT department does not need to add an abundance of onsite servers. The other thing that these two have in common is that they are made to be a supplement to an MDM not a replacement. It is easy to see how this can become an integral part of running a successful MDM while keeping employees happy.
Unfortunately at this point these services are only offered on Android powered devices. There is no doubt that these companies are working hard to span this technology to all devices and operating systems. As the need for mobile security grows AT&T and Verizon, in partnership with Enterproid and VMware, are helping pave the way for a compromise between IT and employees who are using their own devices. This is an exciting time to be in the mobile enterprise technology world and it is great to see that there are companies out there that are making that transition a painless and profitable one.
