With the baseball season finally at its conclusion and the celebration of the San Francisco Giants as the World Series champs recently occurring, it is usually the beginning of teams’ reflection on the past season. It is a time when the executives and manager analyze how well they fared and what needs to be changed next year to finish play-off-bound. And sometimes sacrifices have to be made for the betterment of the team.
What is going to put the team over the top? Is the current plan put in place a few years ago succeeding? Need to make adjustments? Power-hitter? Middle reliever? A Closer? This is the time to reflect and determine what needs to change to secure a dynasty or improve to make the playoffs.
Same can be said about the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend and how well companies have executed on their mobile security strategies. Have you really been able to take advantage of the BYOD trend? Is the company still issuing and managing mobile devices to employees?
Companies have attempted to take advantage of the BYOD trend for a few years now. Their strategy included the use of personal devices to access the corporate network through building a mobile security infrastructure. A lot of money has been spent addressing the challenges BYOD presents. And yet the growth of mobile security breaches is on the rise. The two biggest mobile security risks are malware infections and end-user negligence. And IT professionals and executives are expecting these incidents to continue to grow.
Mobile application security poses an enormous risk in securing access and data on the corporate network. Applications are not secured and shouldn’t be trusted.
“The challenge is to accommodate the 'work anywhere, anytime' productivity and user satisfaction benefits that consumerization and BYOD can bring, while retaining enough control to keep company data secure and compliance requirements satisfied,” said Charles McLellan, ZDNet Mobility & Telecoms newsletter.
Authenticating identity credentials to properly secure access while enforcing and reporting on the use of the company’s BYOD policy also remains a major concern.
Additionally, according to an August Pnemon Institute survey, it found 60 percent reported that mobile devices have diminished employees' security practices and 52 percent said security practices were frequently sacrificed in order to improve productivity.
Clearly, something isn’t working. The current plan of securing the use of Android and iOS mobile devices just doesn’t seem to be meeting the mobile security needs. Utilizing Mobile Device Management (MDM) and container technology just doesn’t seem to be enough.
In fact, the survey also indicated that half of the IT professionals that responded are not satisfied with the mobile security solutions currently used. A scary 30 percent said they had no mobile security features in place.
Continuing existing practices that aren’t working is similar to a baseball team not filling their holes year after year and obtaining the same results.
Now is a good time to consider other options. BYOD technology is evolving. Dell Secure Mobile Access (SMA) secures the use of mobile devices. In addition to per-app VPN functionality, the use of Application Access Control technology in SMA, provides a higher level of protection than any other solution available today in the market. Being able to extend per-app VPN by further restricting and associating access to a specific corporate resource will lessen the risk of mobile device access. Additionally, restricting access by end user identity, client device ownership, and specific application versions maximizes security access. Not only is SMA able to validate the authenticity of the mobile app, including the legitimacy of the container, but also assigns a unique digital signature to the app to ensure its identity using SHA 256 cryptology, the most stringent available.
Combining SMA with Dell’s Enterprise Mobility Management solution provides the best possible solution by effectively managing the mobile device environment while securing the mobile access to corporate resources.
Don’t wait any longer. Make the adjustments today to maximize the use of personal devices and secure the access to host resources. BYOD does not have to be unreachable. The championship you seek is only a Secure Mobile Access away.