Consumerisation Prompts Mobile Questions

Perfect preparation…

He recommended CIOs break the company down into segments and assess who needs data access, to what data and when. This should provide a degree of confidence in assuming liability from employees.

“It’s not about the device; it’s about the information,” said McQuire. “Your information and security policies need to align to this but equally you need the right management tools to give you visibility and fundamental management of those devices.”

“But that will also allow you the ability to set policy and frameworks in terms of governance around your programmes more effectively. That’s probably the most important piece –make sure you have the right infrastructure, security and management to allow you the ability to set governance.”

Bryan Littlefair, Global Chief Information Security Officer, Vodafone agreed but pointed out that the balance must be struck between making security effective without being intrusive on the user experience.

“The challenges are understanding the unstructured data, and making security as invisible as possible so it is not a corporate cop but a facilitator,” he said. “If you have a password prompt pop up every 30 seconds users will look for a way around it.”

Not the only option

It is still an option to incorporate users’ devices into the enterprise framework but a fragmented network of privately owned devices presents challenges for support departments, as does ensuring security software is up to date.

For enterprises of a certain size this would be no real problem but company wide investment does bring economies of scale in terms of devices and tariffs and avoids the administration of reimbursing employees for business expenses incurred on private devices.

Separating business and personal calls or data usage is often tricky so even with clear liability rules and policies acces to the right billing data must be assured. An agreed personal allowance, where budgets allow, is a far more manageable solution.

Whatever solution a business enterprise adopts, it’s apparent that most of them must have a strategy. Ignore this issue and bury your head in the sands, and you will have less security and a frustrated workforce weighed down by gadget envy. The truly innovative in this area might even spot an opportunity in developing their own apps for devices to support employees and improve productivity.

“Don’t go big bang, it’s very important to start small,” was the advice from IDC’s Nicholas McQuire.

“But certainly, certain tasks withinm the organisation, certain apps that are effectively non-core, lend themselves nicely as early starting points for dipping your toes in the water.”