How Secure is Your Smartphone?

Smartphones are not secure devices—most of them are not installed with security software or any in-built mechanism to warn against potential attack

Across the world, business users are lowering their usage of PCs in favor of smart mobile devices to access mails and business applications. Some like Deloitte CTO Jerome Oglesby believe that business executives will soon abandon their PCs, laptops and even the more portable and lightweight netbooks in favor of more personal mobile devices. Oglesby is of course talking from his experience at Deloitte where more than 5,000 employees no longer access e-mail on their notebooks, but only on their smartphones.

 

While we are still years away from Deloitte-type mobile environments at workplaces in India, mobile device and application usage is nevertheless growing dramatically here as well. Smartphones are more affordable and mobile operators are offering attractive data plans, including flat rate Internet access.

 

Moreover, mobile operators have also begun offering business applications like CRM and ERP for mobile devices in India. Several companies provide smartphones to their employees—especially mobile workers—for business use, and many employees use their personal devices for company work. Overall, smartphones have emerged as a critical business and productivity tool.

 

Smartphones pose new challenges 

This growing usage of smartphones in business environments is throwing up new management challenges for both enterprises and users. While many of the new challenges surround security of applications and data residing in mobile devices, the bigger challenge for businesses lies is ensuring an effective device management.

 

While some organizations have a mobile device management policy and system in place, which is similar to their IT asset management system, most organizations lack such a system. However, subjecting all devices used by employees to corporate management could be challenging especially in environments where not many devices are company assets—many employees use their own personal devices for business use.  Subjecting employee-owned devices to corporate management will always be resisted as mobile devices are personal in nature.