Mobile security: The long road ahead

Shiv Kumar

BANGALORE,INDIA:The market for mobile enterprise solutions is undoubtedly growing, so everyday sensitive data walks out the doors of the enterprise--customer contact lists, pricing data and R&D information that executives and sales staffers carry around on their mobile phones.

As next-generation smart phones become progressively more full-featured and powerful with applications like mobile banking, m-wallet, support multiple VPN methods and run a broad range of business applications, more employees will adopt these devices as a primary connectivity method.

The proliferation of VoWi-Fi (Voice over Wi-Fi) and smart mobile devices that can access enterprise applications and data, from just about anywhere, over a wide variety of Wi-Fi and cellular network connections is creating both great opportunities and significant challenges for IT departments. Not only do companies need to minimize the risk associated with the possible loss, theft or misuse of a growing population of sophisticated devices, but they also need to find technologies to manage everything from company-issued mobile devices to a host of different personal and partly personal mobile devices.

Ensuring the security of these--and other mobile devices-should be a top priority for any business with their workforce on the move. Defining Mobile Security Policies and enforcing them would be the key than just relying on VPNs based transport standard security.

The upcoming and sophisticated WiMax and LTE based 4G networks will bring more multi-mode devices in to the action which would increase the volume of security threats represented by hackers, viruses and other malware.

Growing number of smart phones and the usage of the devices to do the mobile commerce and access to the personal and business information ‘on the go’ will further drive the security solution adoption both in the consumer and business market.

Management systems built for one particular type of device or on the assumption of one particular network connection simply won’t work in this situation – enterprises need to implement management systems that can handle a diverse range of different devices, settings, applications and services, regardless of where they are or how they are connected.

(The author is the executive vice president, Business Development, Zylog Systems Ltd)