With recent news about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton using her own private email and email servers while holding governmental office, it’s a good time for us to walk through a little refresher on the nature of handling emails and other data in a business environment.
With nearly everyone using smartphones and tablets (and soon Apple watches) to communicate, companies must strategically discuss the laws, regulations, and best practices for monitoring and securing emails and data. Protecting an email server in a secure location behind a firewall is one thing. Protecting mobile devices that go anywhere and everywhere is entirely something else.
Whether you are a small business or a Fortune 500 company, you likely provide certain employees access to sensitive data related to your company. At the same time, you probably also allow some access to sensitive data about your clients, which may constitute a larger risk. Many companies today are requiring vendor partners to demonstrate and verify data security protection in their internal networks as well as externally, specifically to targeted endpoints such as smartphones and tablets. Vigilant companies are putting new language into the agreements and contracts between parties in order to protect themselves.
As part of your mobile security strategy, you should use an Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) solution to secure ANY mobile device, particularly those with access to corporate email and documents. With advancements in EMM, organizations can choose to separate corporate information from personal email, data and pictures on the same mobile device. They can even restrict access to certain corporate data on the device and prohibit data from ever being stored there.
Knowing that today’s businesses will spend the time, energy and resources needed to protect their entire IT environment with network firewalls, encryption, multiple passwords, patches, backups, anti-virus software and more, one must wonder why they would then leave the back door wide OPEN with unsecured mobile devices!
Whether you’re using your mobile devices for personal, corporate or a shared use, CLOSE the back door by protecting all data with a strong EMM solution. You’ll sleep better knowing you have a LOCK on your market by giving your KEY customers peace of mind that their data is protected as well.
