Mobile Device Management – Are You In Denial?

“Companies are in denial about mobile device management,” claimed Ian Kilpatrick, chairman of Wick Hill Group, speaking as the company became UK distributor for Silicon Valley-based vendor Zenprise, a leader in mobile device management.

“The use of mobile devices such as smartphones, laptops and tablets, for connecting to the company network is set to grow rapidly over the next few years,” said Kilpatrick, “but most companies, while aware of the issues around integrating them into the network, are still not taking action to effectively secure and manage them.

“They perceive the task as being too complex and too difficult, so are just putting it off and hoping for the best, despite the security and data leakage risks and despite the fact that failure to act will render them non-compliant in several areas.”

Figures from the CISCO VNI: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update 2011-2016 show the scale of future growth. It predicts that the number of mobile connected devices will exceed the world’s population in 2012 and that global mobile data traffic will increase 18-fold between 2011 and 2016, with a compound annual growth rate of 78%.

Kilpatrick explained: “You can’t stop the tide of progress. Users want to be able to connect to company networks with mobile devices, whether their own or belonging to the company. And most organisations do now allow mobile device access, whether it’s for email or for more extensive usage.

“This demand for mobile device access is only going to grow and it has many positive benefits for organisations in terms of employee productivity. But it has to be secured and it has to be managed.

“Companies are in denial because they realise it’s not just about how they secure an individual mobile device, but it’s about many other factors ,such as making sure mobile device usage complies to company security policies, allocating access rights, configuring and updating devices properly, dealing with data leakage issues, dealing with lost or stolen devices. Additionally, there’s the issue of managing both employer-owned and employee-owned devices. How do you differentiate?”

Fortunately, said Kilpatrick, Zenprise has a tried and tested solution which comprehensively covers all the issues around mobile device security and management, making it easy to incorporate mobile devices, both company and employee owned, into the company network.

“Companies need to act and install mobile device management,” he said, “before mobile device usage grows further, putting networks at risk when network access is allowed, and putting competitiveness at risk if it isn’t.”

Zenprise Mobile Manager can be delivered as an on-premises or cloud solution. It allows you to manage the mobile device lifecycle of employer and employee devices across every major platform, including iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry, Symbian and Windows Mobile.

This comprehensive, feature rich solution covers deployment, configuration, provisioning, security, monitoring, support and decommissioning.

For more information about Zenprise, please visit www.zenprise.com or follow the Zenprise blog (http://www.zenprise.com/blog), Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/zenprise ), and Twitter (@Zenprise_Inc).