The technology landscape is rapidly evolving and there is a need to constantly update and upgrade and this is particularly true in the space of mobile device management, writes Manoj Khilnani
There was a time when the primary objective of IT departments was to secure and manage what was within the enterprise perimeter. The rise of tablet computing and mobility changed that landscape irreversibly and redefined enterprise security forever. BYOD is the new buzz word and companies that have adopted BYOD policies are struggling with various concerns like separating corporate and personal data on an employee’s device. For many CIOs, today, the objective isn’t to lock down devices, but to securely deploy enterprise apps so that employees can work with critical business data in a safe and secure manner anywhere at any time.
This new focus area has led to an interesting mobile security concept known as containerisation. The concept of containerisation refers to a solution that creates an encrypted zone or container on a device within which, corporate apps and data can reside. Policy controls apply only to what is included in the container, instead of the entire device. It simply means separating the corporate mobile apps and data from the personal. Access to data in the container requires secure authentication independent of any other device settings or restriction.
The result being that even on a device with no unlock pass code, no whole device encryption, and no security policies of any type, the contents of the container remain inaccessible unless an authorised user enters valid credentials. This allows the IT department to wipe all business data from a personal device remotely without wiping any personal data or apps.
BYOD is all about the user but if IT managers want to place controls on the user device to separate out and manage corporate e-mail, applications and data, it’s possible to enforce security such as authentication, encryption, data leakage, cut-and-paste restrictions and selective content wiping through various types of container technologies.
According to Gartner, through 2014, employee-owned devices will be compromised by malware at more than double the rate of corporate-owned devices, which further compounds the BYOD dilemma. The growing acceptance of BYOD policies in the corporate world has compelled enterprises to address a range of concerns related to data management on an employee’s device.
There is an urgent need for solutions that are able to apply security policies and restrictions to a growing diversity of BYOD platforms, both wired and wireless. These solutions should be able to provide network access control based on the compliance state, ownership and many other attributes of a BYOD.
One of the key advantages of containerisation is that it actually relaxes the tight control over employee-owned devices common to many current MDM strategies. Because it has been difficult to separate corporate apps and data from a user’s personal content in the past, MDM tools have had to be extremely conservative in terms of managing corporate resources on BYODs, with policies often applying to the entire device — addressing both personal and professional apps and data.
For businesses that need to implement the strongest of security policy and compliance controls — such as those in the financial and banking sectors — containerisation can be useful in making the BYOD experience more acceptable for users. In some ways it frees employees to use their devices as they please but at the same time binds their corporate data and information to an enterprise security framework.
In conclusion, containerisation fits in very well with today’s mobile management objective, that is, to manage the data, not the device. So when you visualise the future of Enterprise Mobility Management, it is easy to see the pivotal role that containerization technologies will likely play.
Manoj Khilnani is Country Marketing Head – Enterprise, BlackBerry India
