Enterprise Mobility Management

EMM is becoming a “must-have” for almost every enterprise that has a BYOD policy.

While BYOD risk remains high, security professionals and business executives must consider the options for balancing security with the needs and wants of both their internal and external customers. Exposure to risk from BYOD policies has increased over the past few years; however, organizations have become less diligent in BYOD management and mitigation. Many IT professionals believe that sensitive company data is at risk due to employees accessing information from personal devices both during work hours and after hours, yet adoption of available Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) solutions remains low.

Many organizations still have no official BYOD policy and, therefore, lack guidelines and best practices for their employees. And most IT pros would probably admit that mobility has become both a blessing and a curse. Greater connectedness may provide greater flexibility but it also heightens stress by both extending the workday and the security vulnerabilities of the network. From executives to employees to IT pros, the sentiment is the same…increased accessibility to work applications, documents, and email via their mobile devices has increased stress for IT managers and executives because they know and acknowledge the increased vulnerabilities and risks of enabling “always on” connectivity and access by BYOD users.

Would you prefer to work in yesterday’s world where there was a lack of mobility connection to work? I would guess that most IT professionals and company executives would say “that cow has already left the barn!” We have no choice but to embrace mobility, so the challenge is achieve a balance between access and security. But this balance is not easily achieved unless you have a system that enables granular level management of policies, procedures, and maintenance regarding those devises.

The challenge of configuring a workable and effective mobility management solution gets even more complex when you add the various operating platforms into the mix. The deficiency of BYOD policy and management could heighten the threats of cybercrime and mobile security attacks for organizations without a robust and scalable EMM. As mobility increases and BYOD becomes the default way of doing business, the degree of exposure to risk will be amplified by the fact that IT professionals and other employees are always connected, working from multiple devices from just about any location. Companies that are currently overwhelmed by the process of instituting and upholding BYOD controls, or don’t feel that there is a legitimate threat, or have made the dangerous assumption that their tech-savvy workforce doesn’t need direction regarding safe use of personal devices, should now be considering the benefits of deploying a cost-effective, robust, and scalable solution for enterprise mobility management.