Smartphone Security Beyond Lock and Wipe

Didn’t catch this in my Google alerts when it was published (which is why I’m only posting about it now!) – but I did an overview of smartphone security options for EnterpriseMobile in June.

Smartphones in use by company employees have changed a lot over the years — from phones with simple repositories of contact and calendar information to 32GB multi-function devices that can connect to the corporate cloud and download huge quantities of information. The traditional gold-standard of protection for these mobile devices is lock and wipe. Locking renders the device unusable and wiping removes all data on the device and resets it to the default (out of box) configuration.

But just as mobile devices have evolved, so has mobile device security to include additional features and management options. In this piece we take a look at whether or not mobile IT staff are using lock and wipe for company phones and how the available solutions have evolved over the years.

To prioritize what matters most, Eric Maiwald, research vice president of Gartner, says the majority of companies are looking for three key capabilities on phones: “Authentication, encryption of stored data and the ability to kill it remotely.” There are a few basic ways to implement these capabilities:

Natively — using management tools that come with the phone or from the phone provider;

Third Party Messaging — using management from the e-mail service, such as Exchange or GAPE;

Third Party Management — management tools purchased for security and policy control of mobile devices.

Many thanks to Eric Maiwald at Burton Group/Gartner for his insight and time. For the full article please click here.