Once upon a time, computer users tethered to desktops. Eventually, desktops gave way to laptops. Today, a bewildering mix of devices are used including mobile devices, handhelds, smart phones, tablets and what have you. A Juniper networks Survey pegs about 40% of employees who use mobile devices for business work.
If you can connect a device to the company servers and the Internet, all the threats pertaining to data will now be applicable to these devices too. Since users access and manage data off mobile devices, how should data protection be enforced? How can a business literally protect data to be stolen, misused or damaged while users access this data? Here are some best practices:
Who’s that connecting again?
You can only protect data – whether on your enterprise network or on your extended mobile devices – by monitoring data usage. Regular monitoring and auditing data usage is a good way to protect business data. You should, however, apply data monitoring and auditing over the air and see that mobile devices fall in line with compliance. Pull in the network access controls, fingerprinting technology, wireless network protocols, etc, and bring in restricted access for mobile devices.
Data encryption
If workers manage and access sensitive business data, you will require persistent data protection and seamless functionality to store and work on data. For that reason, data encryption is a great way to protect data while still available for working. Not all mobile devices, however, support data encryption. To counter that, you could auto-configure selected, enrolled mobile devices for corporate data access and management. Alternatively, self-encrypting features in some mobile devices will work to mitigate data loss and theft threats.
If it’s mobile, locate and track it
Most of the mobile devices come with in-built geographical locators. Use these features to auto-track every device that your workers use. This single step will at least ensure that your corporate data is secure – along with the mobile device itself – and lost devices can be recovered. Configure your mobile devices for alerts on roaming, data transfers, etc, so that you always know what data is being used, transferred or stored.
Mobile device locks
A mobile device lock is your first line of defence. You can prevent any unauthorized access by a simple mobile device lock and save your business data. Most mobile devices come with simple locking mechanisms and you may use that for enrolling multiple mobile devices and enable built-in PIN or password locks. Also, you may want to incorporate block or remediating mechanisms for any non-compliant devices within your network.
With users going mobile, data protection is an important after thought your business cannot overlook. Are you protecting your business data from possible theft or loss off mobile devices?
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