Mobile Device Security:
Professionals are increasingly realizing the productivity benefits of mobile device security in Smartphones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and converged PDA/phones. While this mobile revolution is an advatage to professionals, it is creating a tremendous security management challenge for CIOs and other IT professionals. Proprietary and confidential data is now moving outside of the secure perimeter of the enterprise and onto mobile devices that can be located anywhere in the world. What’s more, these mobile devices have a variety of data communication and storage technologies, such as e-mail/PIM synchronization software, infrared data transmission, Bluetooth® and removable data storage. As a result, it is easy for mobile devices to become strongholds of enterprise information.
Unless actions are taken to secure this information, the mobile device security
represents a risk on the enterprise side.
This white paper identifies security threats to corporate data on mobile devices and details how mobile devices can become a “backdoor” to the enterprise. This paper also details how immediate action can be taken to defend against these threats and which issues an IT security manager should be aware of while planning a comprehensive handheld mobile device security policy. While server-side and transport security is vital to an overall mobile data security plan, this white paper will focus on security as it relates to the mobile device.
Issues addressed include:
- How much of a security threat is the mobile device to my organization?
- What threats do these mobile devices bring to the enterprise?
- What security policies should be deployed to provide adequate protection?
- Should I have any regulatory or compliance concerns?
Mobile Devices: A Productivity Boon, An Enterprise Risk
MOBILE WORKERS—RAPIDLY INCREASING NEED FOR MOBILE DEVICE SECURITY
The analyst firm Frost & Sullivan estimated that in 2004 there were 50 million workers whose jobs required them to perform work outside of the office. By 2010, there will be 72 million—a number representing a compound annual growth rate of over 6 percent. In addition, the number of mobile data users will grow much more quickly, at a compound annual growth rate of 34 percent. By 2010, the total number of mobile professionals using their devices to store data will be 37 million.
REQUIREMENT: ENTERPRISE MOBILE DEVICE SECURITY MANAGEMENT
With great power, however, comes great risk. A recent study indicates security for mobile devices are inadequate. Further, the Gartner Group estimates that, through 2006, 90 percent of mobile devices containing enterprise data will have insufficient power-on protection and storage encryption to withstand casual to moderate hacker attacks.
In Gartner’s 2004 Enterprise IT Survey of 1,400 CIOs around the world, CIOs in the US and EU rated mobile workforce issues as a “top five” priority and nearly two-thirds of all CIOs expected mobile workforce spending to grow faster than overall IT budgets.
