Tools and policies are critical to mobile security
When IT professionals think about mobile device security management, they should look to Pokémon for inspiration.
The Pokémon video game franchise centers on the mission statement "Gotta Catch 'Em All." As the mobile devices that Pokémon players carry around improved, the number of Pokémon that gamers can fit in their pocket has greatly increased from 151 in 1998 to more than 800 today.
The number of mobile threats targeting mobile devices in users' pockets has drastically risen with the increase in mobile device adoption and mobile computing power. Despite the rise in the number of threats, mobile admins still have one goal: Catch them all and stop them.
IT professionals should be familiar with the wide range of tools at their disposal to ensure that their mobile device security management is effective for all mobile users. Management practices such as mobile VPNs, mobile data encryption, password complexity requirements, and forcing OS updates and patches can make a major difference.
IT should look to tools like enterprise mobility management, unified endpoint management (UEM), mobile device management and mobile threat defense (MTD) to deploy such policies.
Another crucial step in mobile device security management is understanding which devices work best with which policies. For example, personal mobile devices might be a good fit for a data-centric approach to security, but fully managed devices require more stringent policies.
In this handbook, we examine the critical security programs companies can implement to "catch 'em all," including UEM, multifactor authentication, MTD and corporate BYOD policies. Similar to Pokémon, some security threats will be easier to catch and control than others, but mobile admins must ensure that they catch every mobile threat that attempts to breach a mobile device. Failure to do so could mean game over for an organization's lifeblood -- data.
