WE’RE HEARING that cloud computing may weigh heavily on the future of mobile device management for the financial services industry—in a good way.
Fiberlink, creator of the Maas360
A Research 451 survey of 1,500 corporate IT managers found that while a quarter of companies surveyed banned employees from using their own devices for work, 70% support BYOD. And that number continues to grow.
The problem, as Hazelton sees it, is that most of those companies that embrace BYOD don’t have policies in place to manage how employees use their devices, creating security and compliance risks.
Some 41 states have laws protecting the personal information of consumers, and those state laws are “a minefield” for companies that push out consumer data to employees on mobile devices.
“In all cases these regulations are focused on data, not on devices, apps or users,” Hazelton said.
And that’s where the cloud comes in. He believes companies need to leverage cloud computing capabilities to ensure that data are not housed on a user’s mobile device that could be lost or stolen or misused.
“Companies need to ensure that they are more than adequately protected and they are protecting their customer’s data as well.”
As if we didn’t have enough acronyms related to BYOD practices, the hot new one is EMM—enterprise mobility management. Hazelton says EMM is a strategic approach to mobility that allows people to effectively use mobile computing devices for work independent of any one ownership model. And if one new acronym isn’t enough, the proliferation of company apps has created another one, MAM—for mobile application management. MAM, essentially a sibling of MDM (mobile device management), focuses on compliance with industry and government standards and regulations.
Whether you like it or not, mobile devices are here to stay in the workplace, Hazelton said. IT executives will have to get used to working in a world where they support hundreds of business applications with thousands of data points.
“There is no silver bullet for solving your mobility challenges,” he stressed. “We’ve seen the invasion of devices with BYOD. We’re starting to get our hands around that.”
One big concern for financial firms is how public file sharing apps like Drop Box, used by many people to synchronize their laptop, desktop and mobile offerings, could jeopardize company or customer information. Many firms ban some public apps from being used on devices enrolled in a BYOD program.
“If you really wanted to be onerous you could turn off the public app store access on a device,” Hazelton said.
Fiberlink executives say they already have the ability to block certain apps from being downloaded to mobile devices enrolled in their BYOD platform.
And a separate email wrap and secure messaging can be cordoned off from a user’s personal space on their device.
“It’s important to control where corporate data goes on a mobile device,” Hazelton said.
Another concern company’s face is that employees will feel there is too much of a “Big Brother” aspect to mobile device management policies. Companies should consider incorporating privacy standards into their MDM platform to limit what people in the IT department can see on a user’s device.
Stephen Jones, an account executive in Fiberlink’s division that serves the financial services industry, told me that one reason the banking industry is embracing BYOD is that it presents “huge” potential hardware and data management savings.
The financial services sector is Fiberlink’s largest client base, accounting for about a third of its MDM business. The banking industry’s need to audit actions also has encouraged financial institutions to implement MDM strategies to guide how employees use their devices for work.
Jones noted that Gartner Research recently predicted that some
“We are a very mobile marketplace now. We don’t just work 9 to 5 in an office.”
And the security functions surrounding—get ready for another acronym—PII (personally identified information) can be enhanced from the cloud as well, Jones said.
MDM today focuses on providing a “dual persona” on mobile devices, separating what is the employee’s personal apps and information from the corporate side of the device. That way, an employee’s work space and play space stay separated on the device.
Ted Cornwell has covered the mortgage markets since 1990. He is a former editor of both Mortgage Servicing News and Mortgage Technology.
