Author Archive: Matt

Keeping Your Mobile Data Safe

Over the past decade we’ve become increasingly aware of the importance of online security. Everything we do online is a risk, from sending an email to buying an item from an online store. With prying eyes looking for any opportunity to extract our personal information, we now take some extreme measures to prevent this from happening.

Emails are being encrypted and sites are doing everything they can to ensure that any transactions are secure and that details entered cannot be accessed by anyone who doesn’t have the right. With businesses now looking for their employees to utilise modern technology and work wherever they are, whenever they can, using whatever device they have available; there is now added importance in keeping mobile data secure too. The rise in BYOD (bring your own device) in business has been great for employees who can use their own products without having to learn about new operating systems or programs, but security has been an issue in some cases.

Enterprise mobility and cloud computing have meant that IT is just about anywhere, and constantly at our fingertips. If we have to work on a project due in a matter of hours, we can. If we need to send an important email to seal a deal, we can. The problem is that the information being shared is leaving a digital snail trail and measures are having to be created to stop this data being accessed by those who have no right to see it.

Some are implementing measures having already experienced data leakages or theft first-hand, while others are trying to develop strategies to prevent anything happening down the line. Whichever approach is being taken, it’s important to get it right, because users trying to work on their own mobile devices won’t want the same sort of heavy-handed approach to security that they experience in the workplace.

Nobody wants to be sacrificing their user experience for security, because it just means that users can’t have fun with their devices anymore. Entering passwords after every click or being blocked from accessing certain sites or documents for fear of security breaches won’t be good for anyone, and essentially makes BYOD irrelevant because it’s no longer your device.

One good case study is the BlackBerry Enterprise platform, which helps administrators to manage BlackBerry devices as well as cross-platform security (meaning it covers iOS and Android devices as well). This allows for the smooth and seamless flow of data, without compromising security to do it – the happy medium if you like. To be productive, sometimes you need to access certain files and websites, and this is where the approach to BYOD needs to be considered rather than down to interpretation.

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