Managing Security On Smartphones Easier Than On Laptops

Sunil Gupta, Senior Vice President and Mobility Service Lines Head, Symphony Services, dwells on how the BYOD phenomenon is fuelling the growth of enterprise mobility. He also advises CIOs on how to mitigate the security aspect in BYOD.

What is behind the proliferation of enterprise mobility?

Employees view their smartphones, tablets, and other devices as extensions of themselves. They are highly customised and have become indispensible to their owners. BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) is surging today as CIOs recognise the cost and productivity advantages of allowing employees to use these personal devices for business use. This is one of the most strategic trends globally today, and dramatically re-shaping how enterprise applications are developed, deployed, managed and consumed. We’re finally closing the user experience gap between business and personal devices and applications which is exciting.

This trend is definitely poised to grow further as heavy funding from venture capitalists is being directed into the mobility and cloud industry. Enterprise mobility is most widely accepted in the Healthcare, Retail and BFSI verticals as there are very relevant use cases in these industries.

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Many CIOs are concerned about the security aspect in BYOD. How should they overcome these concerns?

Security has always been a top priority for CIOs. But the truth is that managing security on devices such as smartphones is easier than that of laptops. If a laptop is lost, it subsequently results in data loss. But if a device is lost, there are software tools available to lock the device and erase the sensitive business data over the air on the lost devices.

There are a lot of new security solutions to consider too. For example, Mobile Device Management solutions offer policy governance and management, device lifecycle management and data management which include device lock-in and wipe out. Another solution is the custom app store which provides enterprises with secure distribution channels and flexibility to control exposure to user groups.

But security cannot be looked at in isolation, given its relationship to other aspects of enterprise mobility such as application performance. The complexity of security, ecosystem integration, performance management and other areas have prompted most CIOs to look for a managed service provider in for enterprise mobility services. It’s clearly easier – and more cost effective – to buy versus build today.
How do you see maturity of the products and evolution of device management mechanisms in this space?

The products are readily available today, as much investment has gone on in areas like enterprise app stores, Mobile Enterprise Application Platforms (MEAP), Mobile Device Managers and more. The challenge really comes in addressing a specific business’s priorities and objectives for enterprise mobility, and then selecting, integrating and managing a multi-vendor best in class solution.

BYOD also requires traditional device management mechanisms to mature into smart systems that can identify enterprise context, govern the device usage and seamlessly switch over to an unrestricted usage when the user is operating in personal context.

This is an area where many lessons can be learned from early adopters of enterprise mobility.

Please suggest best practices to increase adoption of enterprise mobility.

Mobility adoption is taking place in a phased manner. A strategy must be developed, applications must be written or modified, an application store built, security managed, ongoing operations launched, and more. Most CIOs are heavily engaged at this point in various stages of deployment.

BYOD has sparked a renaissance period for enterprise applications. Our advice to the CIO fraternity is to take the managed services route where partner takes care of mobile strategy formulation (multi mobile platform support), technology selection, implementation and management of service in a dollar per application per device pricing model with assurance of the benefits from enterprise mobility.