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Most enterprises rank mobility and mobile worker solution deployments within the ir top 5 initiatives for the next 3 years. This fact is consistently indicated in surveys of business executives from a wide variety of industries. Indeed, we expect mobile deployments to expand dramatically over the next 3-5 years as solutions become easier to deploy, connections become faster and more reliable, and devices become more capable and less costly. However, few companies have recognized that the very mobile devices they deploy to enhance worker productivity and improve operations can cause the company to face an increased risk of security and compliance breaches. And few companies currently know how to effectively mitigate such risk. Further personal, non-company issued devices that users acquire independently and bring into the workplace should cause companies great concern. Indeed, management and control of these devices is imperative if companies are to protect their data and prevent running afoul of existing and proposed regulations. Many governments (on the state, regional and/or federal level) have passed, or are passing, new regulations that will severely penalize companies who are not able to comply with data protection and security regulations.
The massive growth of mobility over the next 3-5 years will likely leave company IT organizations unable to cope with the new mobile reality unless they rethink the ir existing management and security strategy. One of the greatest challenges to both business and IT groups within companies over this period will be effective ly securing mobile solutions in the workforce, over a wide array of devices, connections and applications. This paper will highlight some of the areas in which mobility will expand, some risks and exposures, and address how companies should advantageously securely manage such mobility. Mobile security must be included as a mission critical component of any enterprise strategy and implemented on a pro-active basis before any major security breach has the opportunity to negatively affect the enterprise.
Major Mobility Trends
There is no doubt that workers are becoming more mobile, and are being empowered by the wide array of convenient and affordable mobile devices. With increasingly powerful laptops and tablet PCs, handheld personal digital assistants (PDA) with extended memory, and smart phone devices with the power of the average desktop computer system of only 3-4 years ago, the average worker is being enabled with substantial computing power, extended data storage capability, and wireless broadband connectivity nearly everywhere that employee may be or no matter what that employee may be doing. Below we highlight some of the major trends in enterprise mobility.
Compliance in the Mobile Enterprise
Growth in Mobile Workforce - We expect over 50% of enterprise users to be outfitted with notebook computers within the next 3 years (increasing from approximately 35% currently), and well over 95% of these devices will be wirelessly enabled. Further, we expect that knowledge workers will be mobile 50%+ of the time within the next 2-3 years, working from a diverse location mix of office, home, travel sites, customer sites, etc. Finally, personal mobile devices such as handhelds and smart phones, most of them wirelessly enabled, are being deployed as data access devices. The majority of mobile workers (65+%) will be enabled with such personal mobile devices within 3-4 years, increasing productivity and bringing corporate systems to the point of interaction with the customer.
Increase in Mobile Application Deployments - Forward thinking enterprises are increasingly adopting mobility to drive more effective and efficient operations, particularly in field force operations (e.g., field service, delivery, logistics, field sales, health care delivery). Task-specific devices and applications are extending business critical systems (e.g., ERP, CRM, SFA) to automate previously manual field operations (e.g., order entry, trouble ticketing, dispatching), through deployment of data-enabled mobile devices, including ruggedized notebooks, handhelds and smart phones. This class of user generally views the mobile device as an on-the-job tool, rather than a general purpose computing device, and is likely to have access only to this one device which is a mission critical component of the person?s daily duties. However, these devices too can cause major company exposure to compliance and security breaches, as many currently are not adequately secured. Indeed, we know of many instances when such devices do not eve n require a password to log on to the device or to access its data, which can often be of a sensitive nature (e.g., customer records, service information, name and address data, credit card numbers, employee records).
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