ISACA Journal - 2013 Volume 6

Mobile devices are changing the way people work and many businesses are starting to extend their business applications and business intelligence (BI) capabilities to these devices.

Smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices are playing an increasingly central role in how people communicate, network, work, shop and receive information. Mobile computing has been in the news frequently over the last two years.

So much so, that the average consumer would think that it is a new innovation; however, this is not the case. Mobile computing has been around for over a decade. Lack of wireless connectivity, poor interface design and inefficient power management restricted early mobile equipment to limited markets, and there was no broad commercial success.

The use of smart devices is exploding. Gartner predicts sales of 1. 2 billion smart devices in 2013, with much of this sales growth in the consumer market as a media-consumption platform. 1 However, more and more enterprises are evaluating and using tablets for their mobile workforces. Gartner also predicted that in 2013, 80 percent of businesses will support tablets for their employees. 2

There is also a diverse initiative facing network administrators planning for mobility where IT may consider using consumer-grade devices, such as tablets, to lower hardware costs and increase productivity for dedicated applications such as retail kiosks or electronic medical records (EMR).

The consumerization of IT is being driven
by the use of consumer-oriented devices and
applications crossing over into the small and
medium-sized enterprise (SME) markets. IT must
figure out how to accommodate this because
if the business does not simulate the kind of
experience users have on the consumer side,
they will figure out a way to go around IT to get
their job done. Thus, it is important for network
intelligence to embrace the inherent cost savings
and flexibility built into such
devices while controlling exactly what and how
the devices are used on the network. A truly
comprehensive mobile device solution will need
to address both consumerization of IT and bring
your own device (BYOD) in order to support,
contain and embrace both types of devices.

Currently, more than half of companies support BYOD environments in some shape or form.

However, workers’ preferences for Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android mobile operating systems are driving out enterprise-friendly platforms, such as BlackBerry’s longtime operating system (OS) (now called BlackBerry 10) and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile OS.

As mobile device management (MDM) solutions continue to evolve, next generation technologies are geared to help security professionals move beyond consumer-oriented end points and their inherent security trade-offs.

Moreover MDM adoption is being driven primarily by companies’ needs to properly manage an increasingly diverse population of devices.

Nearly half of all organizations—46 percent— reportedly use MDM today, and 84 percent expect to deploy MDM by the end of 2014.3

CHANGES AFFECTING MOBILE DEVICE USAGE

Today’s mobile computing devices feature central processing units (CPUs) optimized for mobility, integrated wireless broadband, advanced mobile OSs and innovative touch interfaces. As a result, more and more organizations—from colleges to corporations—have begun to adopt BYOD policies. BYOD is the movement to allow staff members or students to gain access to a network via their personal devices instead of devices distributed by the enterprise’s IT department.

Adesanya Ahmed, CRISC, CGEIT, ACMA, ACPA, is an IT security and connectivity consultant. Ahmed was the first to provide a CerebusServer broadband billing authentication for hotspot Wi-Fi and WiMAX Internet service providers (ISPs) in Nigeria. Ahmed is a founder and the chief technology officer (CTO) of Petrovice Resources International Ltd., a global software solutions firm providing total software solution for mobility/tablet and web application development.