Ben Halpert / August 2007
Mobile Enterprise

The frenzy surrounding the launch of one of the most hyped consumer product introductions in recent memory, the Apple iPhone, provides a nice segue into part one in a series of four columns related to the importance of developing and maintaining a secure enterprise mobility strategy.

At last year's RSA Conference, information was presented that showed that, on average, the typical employee owns 4.5 mobile devices. I prefer easy calculations, so let’s agree on 5. By all accounts, if the same study was completed next year, I would expect the number to roughly double. An extreme prediction, but justifiably

so. How many mobile devices do you own? How many mobile devices do you use daily that have been provided by your organization? How many laptops, cell phones, USB memory drives, iPods, portable gaming platforms, SecureDigital cards, GPS devices, etc., do you utilize? Have you attended a conference or seminar lately where mobile devices were not used as a lure to get you to stop by a booth or to collect your contact information? I haven't.

While we all enjoy new gadgets, the effect of utilizing newly acquired mobile devices could have unintended consequences for enterprises. Based on my prediction of 10 mobile devices per user for 2008, how would an organization the size of IBM, for example, securely manage the menagerie of mobile devices available today that can store and transmit sensitive information? At today's count of 355,766 employees, IBM has to

manage sensitive information on 3,557,660 mobile devices. How many employees and contractors are in your organization? (Now you know why I like easy math).

To help guide organizations down the path of developing a secure enterprise mobility strategy, I have penned Ben's Laws of Mobile Data Security. The first of which is: You can't stop mobile device proliferation. You can try, but good luck! Did you give or receive a mobile device for a recent occasion: Mother's Day, Father's Day, a birthday? Now you know why; mobile device proliferation is consumer driven.

The remaining three laws on developing and maintaining a secure enterprise mobility strategy will be discussed in upcoming issues. See you next month.

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