The debate over personal versus professional still rages strong. For all users using their personal devices at work or vice versa, there is just too much at stake for them to give up. For the enterprises where these employees work, security, and protection of corporate data is paramount.
The debate over personal versus professional still rages strong. For all users using their personal devices at work or vice versa,
there is just too much at stake for them to give up. For the enterprises where these employees work, security, and protection of corporate data is paramount. Both of them are correct in their own accord. Both of them have thighs they want to protect from encroachment form each other. Therefore, they are at war. While the 2 cats fight, the monkey is out there making money selling MDM solutions, trying to convince them both that their problems are over. But are they? There are some challenges with all forms of mobility management solutions out there today.
1. MDM - privacy issues - the MDM solutions have a control - it - all approach, where the entire device can me remotely administered. While a great option for IT, it puts the user’s privacy are a serious risk. The remote admin can, if he / she so desires, read your mails, browse your pictures, turn on your microphone and camera, shut down your device, or even wipe it clean. Its obvious why employees do not like it.
2. MAM - control issues - A softer, more lenient version of MDM, the mobile application management solutions control and manage only the corporate applications. However, it has no control over the other apps that the user downloads and installs. Event he basic apps like email, calendar, and contacts can be a challenge when you try to control them using MAM, if they are third party software. Therefore, MAM came up with a library of products to replace these core functions. However, the basic nature and poor UI of the same turned the users off.
3. App wrapping - performance issues - Another approach to mitigate data security is to control the features of the corporate applications through wrapping them in a special code. This ensures that the users’ access to the functions and features in an application are limited. For e.g., a user can copy and paste email text to another email out of the same account. However, if he / she tries to copy and paste the content to an account other than the corporate account, or to say a notepad, it will not be allowed. The challenge with this approach is that it impacts the performance of the corporate applications. Since they have to compile and execute the additional wrapper code, they take more time to load, and are a little sluggish in performance.
4. Containerization - resource hogging - having options for trying to control everything, only the app, and the app functionality, a new way was looked at, which tried to control the data. Containerization meant that the corporate apps and data resided in a separate section of the device called a ‘container’. In the event of a loss or theft, only the container would be wiped clean remotely, safeguarding the user’s personal data. This method would have worked great, but for the resource management challenge. The containers tend to occupy much more space than the data and apps they contain. Also, once some data in a container is deleted, the space is not released immediately, sometimes not released at all.
5. Virtualization – identification issue – Jus like the virtualization of compute using VMWare or HyperV, mobile virtualization gave the smartphone dual personalities. It would run two separate instances of the operating system, one for the corporate apps and data, and the other for personal. Another good way, but if a user clicked the picture of a whiteboard after a business meeting, How will that sensitive data be identified and managed?
