BYOD

When Mobile Device meets Home Network

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In his recent Forbes article, Adam Levin made a good argument for the danger of BYOD, and what steps enterprises should employ if they do allow BYOD.  He points out that employees do utilize devices and computer at home, often on insecure networks and weak routers.  Levin emphasizes that enterprises should require and verify that  home networks use secure routers with up-to-date firmware, that home equipment should be just as secure as the network at work.  In general, a lot of solutions forget that its not only tablets and smartphones that enterprises need to worry about.  Laptops are mobile devices too, and if employees are using home computers and home networks, those should be secured as well.

I think the best overall approach to data security is education, containment, verification and respect.  I do agree that it is imperative that enterprises secure their data, the expense of not doing so far outweighs  the costs of security implementation.  While I do believe this should reach even into the employees home network, I think that educating the employees on how important this is and what the disastrous results could be if this is not followed is as critical as the implementation itself.  Furthermore, I think respecting the employees privacy is the number one way to ensure their commitment to protect this data.  Employees will be a lot more likely to follow through with the invasion of their own devices if the corporate data is in a separate container, and the personal part of the device is left alone.  With all the device and data management options out there, there is no excuse to have to wipe all the data off of an employees device; only the corporate data should be wiped.

So, to add to Levin’s points:

1. Have a corporate Data Policy which includes all technology used to access corporate data, whether this is a smartphone or an employees home network used to access corporate data.

2. Discuss above policy with employees to help them understand the importance of keeping corporate data safe, and outline how you will keep the employees data private.

3. Make it easy for employees to implement security software.

 

There are so many data management options out there – choose one that allows comprehensive control and allows employees the privacy and integrity of their own data if the device would need to be wiped.

Can your Employer Wipe your Phone?

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An Survey released today indicated that 70% of employees would not use their personal devices for work if they had knowledge that their employer could remotely wipe or lock that device.  70% !! It’s clear that employees are beginning to recognize that just downloading their work email onto their personal devices such as phones, tablets and laptops means the Enterprise will want to secure that information, and that this is often done in an overbearing, infringement of privacy fashion.  Not that Enterprises are trying to interfere with their employees privacy, they are simply trying to protect their data in any way possible, and in the past, most MDM (Mobile Device Management) solutions have been similar to a linebacker knocking over a toddler to get the ball.

Eweek.com reported that “more than 75 percent of enterprises in the survey were unable to meet eight out of 10 of their current top security requirements– this was combined with the fact that only 11 percent of employees are aware of the current level of enterprise control over their device.”  

So what happens as more and more employees gain awareness of the tight infringements on their personal devices? Lack of compliancy, which leads to vulnerability of sensitive data, which can of course lead to – disaster for the Enterprise.

The study of 1,000 IT  person; and 1,000 employees, conducted by research firm Harris Interactive, found that 83 percent of staff would stop using their own device or still use it with deep concern, if they knew their employer could see what they were doing at all times.

So what’s the Solution?  Enterprises SHOULD protect their data on devices that leave the office, but the level of intrusion on an employee’s personal device needs to be kept in check too, to make sure employees will not feel intruded upon and actually be compliant.  The first step is to use a product/service that uses the minimum security necessary; in many cases there is no need for an Enterprise to monitor which websites employees visit or what games they install.  Keep the Enterprise’s data separate (sandboxed) and manage it that way – it is really more the management of the DATA versus the management of the device.  The second step is discussing these policies with the employees, so that they have full knowledge of what these policies entail and how it affects their personal devices.  Engage your employees in the solution, versus thrusting it upon them.

 Yes, these email policies ARE necessary. But they don’t need to necessarily infringe on your rights – there are solutions out there (our own Cockpit, for one, and likely others, in the future) that are cost-effective, keep company data safe and maintain your privacy.  Win-Win!

 

What Technologies are Enterprises investing in?

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Great Infographic from the Economist (Economist Intelligence Unit, June 2013)  indicating what type of technologies Enterprises are investing in….kind of speaks for itself, doesn’t it?  (We love our TouchDown Email). Very interesting what the forecast is for the next three years. But wait, there is no mention of MDM’s… 😉Unknown

 

 

 

Congratulations to AirWatch and VMWare

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Congratulations to  Alan Dabbiere, John Marshall and all of AirWatch and  VMware! The announcement that AirWatch is being acquired by VMware was officially  announced today. We are super excited about this new chapter in the history of one of our favorite partner companies and we look forward to continuing that relationship with VMware.  It will be wonderful to see the AirWatch management team working closely together with Sanjay Poonen of VMware.  It’s great to see an industry leader such as VMware adopt a solid mobile strategy through an acquisition such as this…especially as BYOD just continues to grow and strategies for consistency and ease of use are a requirement for successful enterprises.

KNOX Vulnerabilities

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There is a lot of buzz going around the discovery that Samsung’s KNOX container has been found to have some vulnerabilities, as reported by the Wall Street Journal Tuesday and  PC World yesterday.  While it is very poor timing for Samsung, considering CES, the huge technology show in Vegas, starts next week, we are confident that Samsung is dedicated to security and will find a fix quickly.

What exactly is the concern? The vulnerabilities found by Israel’s Ben-Gurion University of the Negev indicate that Knox software (when used on a  Samsung Galaxy S4 or Note 3) could allow malicious apps to eavesdrop on data transferred within the secure environment.  The WSJ reports :“Samsung officials told the Journal that the vulnerability was found in developer phones that weren’t “fully loaded with the extra software that a corporate client would use in conjunction with Knox,” the paper reported. So far, the Knox vulnerability has only been discovered on the Galaxy S4.”

The PC World article compared KNOX to our TouchDown, since both are designed to keep data secure – so what does all this mean and how does it work?  TouchDown was specifically designed to keep data secure against this type of data breach.  It keeps corporate data secure through encryption and by keeping it ‘sandboxed’ away from a users personal data on their device (smartphone, laptop, tablet).  It works directly with ActiveSync Exchange and keeps email, contacts, calendar and notes data secure when kept within TouchDown.  Meanwhile Samsung’s KNOX creates a container around several third party apps, with the purpose of keeping data within those apps separate from app data not inside the KNOX container.  The security breach discussed  in the article regards the potential security breach of the KNOX container itself, meaning malware could have access to apps inside the container.  If there are apps inside the container that are not secure, they could potentially be breached. Luckily, TouchDown users can breathe easy, since even if a malware attack did get past the KNOX container it would not be able to breach TouchDown data. So whether you are using  TouchDown in or out of the KNOX container on a Samsung device, your data will remain secure and separate from other data on your device.  If you’re not using TouchDown…what are you waiting for??