Spending this week at the Catalyst Conference here in San Diego, talking to customers and analysts, sitting in on sessions (Bill Nye – yep, the Science Guy – was amazing) and seeing the excitement at the event. One presentation I got to catch was by Gartner Analyst Mario de Boer on the Biggest issues in Mobile Collaboration. A few key take aways:
- Throughout all of the issues, there are two constants – user identity and access AND data-level security. One or the other is the cause for risk.
- Regarding data stored on the device – sure, devices get stolen, lost or destroyed, and guess what? MDM does not solve this problem. Mario suggests encrypting data on an app by app basis.
- Access – Mario suggests that enterprise IT use existing Remote Access Policies and to leverage the cloud. Cloud use, however, has to be balanced with a level of trust in Cloud Service Providers (CSPs).
- Mobile collaboration’s big risk is in the loss of control of data by IT. Mobile collaboration reduces the ability to enforce policies, unveils risk around contractual or compliance issues, and makes it much more difficult to identify incidents and then provide remediation.
What to do?
Mario asked vendors to provide solutions that offer interoperable data-level protection of sensitive information – irrespective of data storage location, device, or client application. Of IT, he asked that IT leaders not be led by FUD, but become brokers of risk, making informed decisions and getting their end users IT-sanctioned tools that still provide a great end user experience.
Pretty good advice.
