MDM Today and the Future

Mobile devices have quickly become a mainstay in enterprise environments and continue to be consumer driven, and yet they find their way into our day-to-day business lives. As these new devices are being brought into the work environment by employees, enterprise IT is increasingly being forced to accommodate for business use. This is not new news. We observe this pattern through our customers today and live this phenomenon within our own everyday work environment at Cisco. Here at Cisco, employees have the flexibility to choose their device and to securely connect to voice, video and data services from anywhere under an Any Device policy. Cisco manages over 64,000 mobile devices today.

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Tags: AirWatch, byod, citrix, good, MDM, meraki, Mobile Device Management, mobile security, MobileIron, mobility, SAP Fiberlink, security

6,000 miles away from Cisco headquarters, the Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client for Android was showcased at Samsung’s SAFE™ (Samsung for Enterprise) booth at Mobile World Congress 2013. The SAFE program offers enterprise customers the peace of mind to use Samsung devices for both work and play. As noted in this year’s annual security report, Android malware grew 2577% over 2012. Under the SAFE program, Samsung has built an enterprise mobile ecosystem and partnered with key market leaders to deliver tested enterprise-ready solutions on their portfolio of smart devices. Read More »

Tags: cisco annual security report, Cisco AnyConnect, Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client, Mobile Device Management, Mobile World Congress 2013, vpn

Employees, and many business, want to allow personal devices to be used at work, and potentially for work. However, balancing that with corporate policies for information security, clear rights-of-use, liability, and then bounding it within an acceptable IT cost structure is no small feat. Cisco joined forces with leading MDM vendors to link together a solution that starts at day zero – when an employee first buys a new device and tries to use it at work. It includes self-service onboarding to the network, offering a choice of using a device as a guest or work asset, and forced enrollment in (and compliance with) MDM when business policy must be enforced.

Citrix recently acquired Zenprise to add top-tier MDM to their mobile workspace and application management solution. The good news is Zenprise is an early MDM partner with Cisco, and Citrix inherits the integration work. The tight linkage of Cisco’s Unified Access Solution, and the Cisco Identity Services Engine, to what is now Citrix XenMobile MDM, is a powerful combination for customers to deploy since it brings quite a bit more to the table than standalone MDM.

Tags: citrix, Identity Services Engine, ISE, MDM, Mobile Device Management, mobile device security, mobile devices, unified access, Zenprise

Several years ago, I had a conversation with an IT manager about his company’s network security that I still remember today. He said: “We’re losing our battle over internal network security. We cannot keep up with our vendors and contractors who bring in all kinds of devices to our network. We may turn our internal network into a DMZ.” Turning an internal network into a DMZ was probably an extreme case at that time but it showed the underlying problem: if you don’t have control over what’s happening on your network, you’ll have an uphill battle in your hands.

Today, the challenge has intensified due to the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend. There are speculations that corporate networks may eventually turn out to be the equivalent of college networks where users routinely bring their own personal devices. Because personal devices generally do not have the same level of security as IT-owned assets, they tend to have more vulnerabilities and it’s harder to protect sensitive information and intellectual property on these devices. The adage, “security risks walk in the door with employees” is quickly becoming a reality that organizations must address.

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Tags: 802.11ac, Bring your Own Device (BYOD), byod, DMZ, enterprise network, MDM, Mobile Device Management, UA, unified access

I attended MobileCon 2012, the newly branded CTIA enterprise and application event, earlier this month. I noticed the common theme this year was MDM-BYOD-Cybersecurity. Given the recent McKinsey report that indicated 77 percent of CIOs today state that they will allow some form of consumerization in the coming few years, IT professionals are challenged to increase flexibility without compromising security

Throughout the event, I heard many BYOD case studies with a huge interest/following in data and metrics. On this theme, I thought our own Cisco BYOD case study that we have been sharing with our customers would be of interest to this community.

Note, I will provide updated numbers soon as my peers continue to seek out the latest and greatest mobile devices here in the center of Silicon Valley.

For Cybersecurity, I’d like to follow up on John Stewart’s thoughts from yesterday. October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and the joint-task theme between public and private industries resonated across the show. On this note, Cisco is one of the contributors in CTIA’s recently released Cybersecurity Whitepaper.

In my next few blogs, I want to share interesting facts I’m calling, “Did U Know Data for Mobile Security.” The first fact comes from Osterman Research, Inc. for Azaleos.

“The leading factor (34%) cited for deploying an MDM solution was the potential for loss of intellectual property.”

Tags: bring your own device, byod, cyber, cybersecurity, MDM, Mobile Device Management, mobile devices, mobilecon, STIA