Mobile Security Solutions Moving from Threat Assessment to Managed Services

John Marcus

Summary Bullets:

• Most mobile security services for the enterprise still focus on advisory and integration, stopping short of fully managed services.
• This should change soon, as managed solutions increasingly hit the market, but managed mobile security will be baked into more comprehensive mobile device management (MDM) solutions rather than packaged as a standalone offering.

In yesterday’s IT Connection blog post on IT service providers and mobility, Kitty Weldon wrote about how 2013 has seen noticeable activity – rather than just talk – when it comes to key players delivering mobile-centric services to the enterprise.  “ITSPs are gaining an increasing share of mobility-oriented enterprise business, especially in areas such as mobile strategy and mobile application development and enablement (which is to be expected), but also for mobile device management and mobile security.”  The security piece is especially intriguing, as a number of professional and managed services focused on the intersection of MDM and security have been rolled out (or at least announced) in the last couple months, and the impression given by service providers is that they cannot get their solutions out fast enough to answer enterprise demand for external knowledge, advice and operational assistance in the wake of the flood of devices overrunning their IT landscapes.

Identity Proofing Is Key to Mobile IT and More, but Cost Matters Too

Sandra O’Boyle

Summary Bullets:

• Identity management solutions are traditionally associated with hardware tokens and passwords, and while these continue to be used and enhanced, they do not work for everyone (e.g., hardware tokens offer better assurance but can be expensive, and it can take time to ship a new token if someone loses one).  Passwords will continue to be widely used, but remembering multiple passwords, for both personal and business use, requires keeping them simple or using the same ones over and over – which in itself defeats the whole purpose of security.
• Some enterprises are starting to move towards soft token multi-tenanted solutions that require multiple-factor authentication, yet are globally available in nature, flexible (with no limit on devices and options) and include authentication apps for smartphones and iPads.  Service providers such as Verizon are offering identity management services based on a multi-tenanted authentication platform that is hosted and managed by the service provider in its data center; this helps to keep costs down.  This approach is being positioned by service providers as ‘identity-as-a-service’ where companies pay a per-user fee.  In the future, Google and others will also be experimenting with biometrics and facial recognition as part of identity proofing and securing access to devices, but these are still some way off from enterprise reality.
• The use of a multi-tenanted authentication server provides an easy-to-use management and reporting interface and a flexible price model, compared to the majority of two-factor authentication providers which offer a traditional on-premises solution without multi-tenancy.  These solutions can certainly be used in a cloud context, but they will be required to run either on the customer site, resulting in cost and complexity for the cloud service provider, or in the service provider’s data center, which can also result in cost issues because the solution will not be multi-tenanted.

‘Live’ from CTIA: Day One at MobileCon

Kathryn Weldon

Summary Bullets:

• MobileCon (née CTIA Wireless) 2012 is nearly half over, and while it is by far the smallest Fall CTIA show yet, the major vendors in the enterprise mobility ecosystem showed up to demo their wares, hold informational sessions, and talk to the analyst community.  There has even been a sprinkling of announcements.
• While the fate of the show itself may be in doubt, the growth of both the overall enterprise mobility market and the M2M segment in particular is apparent.  The usual suspects (operators, mobile device management/mobile application management vendors, smartphone manufacturers, m-health providers, UC enablers, mobile application ISVs, systems integrators, and M2M aggregators and technology suppliers) are all here.  So, what were some of the major announcement from Day One?

Sierra Wireless announced a major new partner, Amazon Web Services, which will be providing Sierra customers with its cloud-based infrastructure on which to run their M2M applications.  The Sierra AirVantage cloud (which provides asset, data, and device management) has been integrated with Amazon’s service to provide a joint offer for building and deploying M2M applications with no IT infrastructure costs.