It is easy to comprehend a “large” corporation implementing an overall mobile management strategy as they have lots of employees and a greater perceived risk if internal assets were exposed, right? I think the thought that this is only an issue for “large” corporations is not only naive, but irresponsible. Let’s stop for a second to discuss how the world has changed.

In the past 12 months alone, consumer adoption of mobile devices has grown by over 50% (comScore – Digital Omnivores / Oct 2011 and Ericsson utilization report Nov 2011). 36.1% of Americans over the age of 13 are now using smartphones (comScore Aug 2011). Proliferation of WiFi (secured and unsecured) is assisting in the increased use of mobile devices with 37.2% of US mobile device activity occurring via a WiFi connection. It is clear that our employees (regardless of the size of our company) have mobile devices.

Next we need to examine when they are using the devices (are they using them at work) and we need to understand what they are doing on the devices to determine if there is warranted risk. According to the comScore Dec 2011 report, 38% of all smartphone users have made a purchase using their smartphone. Of those purchases, 42% made a purchase while at work! According to Google’s 2011 usage study, 89% used their smartphones throughout the day, 72% used them while at work. In Nielsen’s July 2011 report on app usage, games topped the charts at 64%, followed by weather (60%) and social networking (56%). If you still are not convinced that lots of opportunities exist to share information during work, take a look at Luke Wroblewski’s article discussing when people are utilizing various devices accessing data such as news.

Now that we have a better understanding that my employees probably already have smartphones, and we know they are using them for all sorts of activities throughout the day, what do we do to protect the company?

Here are a couple of very simple steps to get you started in establishing a mobile management strategy:

• Evaluate the risks – what information do they have access to?
• Based on the risks, determine what services need to have controlled access
• Determine the level of isolation each data source requires (complete sandbox or just controlled access
• There are lots of choices for Mobile Device/Application Management (MDM/MAM), including on-premise and cloud/SaaS solutions. Gartner has a great resource: Critical Capabilities for Mobile Device Management (July 2011)
• Use the monitoring tools to identify potential threats and to determine where you may need to strengthen your strategy

Here are a few of the studies used to compile this article:
comScore Mobile Shopping Goes Mainstream
comScore Purchases from Smartphones
Nielsen – Popular Mobile Apps