Many enterprises clueless on Mobile Data on employees’ mobile devices
Posted by Ron van Valkengoed
Automate Invoice Management to Generate Immediate Hard Dollar Saving
Recent research shows that two in three European companies have no clue what and how much corporate data is housed on employees’ mobile devices. Of those surveyed, two in three companies said they are not fully aware of exactly what sensitive data is stored on employees’ mobile devices and—perhaps more troubling—38 percent said they don’t even know what applications are being run by employees on their smartphones. Moreover, only 15 percent of respondents said that they are “completely confident” that they would be legally protected should an employee’s mobile device be lost or stolen and whatever data contained on the device fell in the wrong person’s or organization’s hands.
Troubling figures…. Smartphones keep employees connected to their work however from a security standpoint, this disconnect poses significant problems for companies that are torn between empowering their employees and locking down the sensitive data they must exchange to do their jobs. In addition to the corporate data there is a lot of valuable personal data on the employee mobile device (pictures, videos, applications, ringtones, personal address book,..) as lines have blurred between the professional and personal life. Employees will back-up this data locally on their computer or somewhere in the “cloud”, posing an even more challenging situation from a security standpoint. Throw in the mix the adoption of (mobile) applications, with the Apple Appstore leading the way in the enterprise/professional world, and the cost of transmission not being free (at best fair usage or roaming fees)….the situation becomes even more critical to resolve. Ignoring the challenge is not an option for most enterprises.
How to deal with this situation?
One could take a classical Strategy Planning Process and move in a top-down approach from objectives, situation analysis all the way to implementation and control. Personally I would go first for a quick-and-dirty baseline bottom-up assessment by using Mobile Device Management (MDM) tools to make an inventory of device-side data, applications being used, which data is being stored outside of the enterprise domain, and trying to investigate/understand (surveys) end user behavior/needs/trends. This data allows for insight on adoption within the enterprise, risk analysis, and future direction and needs. From this point on one can be an informed decision on what to do next and how to do it…….
