Mobile devices – are they the entry point for an enterprise apocalypse?

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It is stated that “of the estimated 14 million Millenial telecommuters, 69 percent of them report that they use whatever device, software, or site they want, regardless of corporate policies.” This issue is not new, as evidenced by this blog post from 2008, as companies start to have more telecommuters and employees become smartphone purchasers this consumerization of IT perspective is becoming even more widespread.

This article suggests, among other things, looking at data usage patterns as a first step toward building mobile user policies around security.

Just because the environment is becoming more complex, it doesn’t mean that it should be less secure. As I'll mention in my next entry, the office environment of the future will likely be an aggregation of whatever tools can capabilities the individual can bring together. Desktop virtualization can provide significant flexibility, whether the organization is supporting “bring your PC to work” or allowing access to corporate resources from wireless devices of any flavor.

Unfortunately, knowing about weaknesses of a platform is not sufficient to keep the environment safe and some of the techniques of not allowing access unless certain conditions are met may no longer be practical. Allowing device access to secure virtual machines that require authentication may be an answer in many situations. This is an area we’ve been talking about for a very long time, but it now seems to be turning into a necessity.