MobileIron Wants To Lock Down Work Data On Your Personal Cloud

Corporate mobile security firm MobileIron has released a service which it says will protect work data from being at threat when employees access it with their personal clouds.

This practice, an example of shadow IT, can cause great distress for firms as sensitive data is accessed through channels which are not secure.

Secure the personal cloud

To combat this, MobileIron has rolled out its MobileIron Content Security Service (CSS), delivering Phase Two of the company’s initiative to secure the personal cloud.

Chris Hazelton, research director for Enterprise Mobility at 451 Research, said: “Employees often bypass restrictive IT policies to use their preferred consumer apps for work, unintentionally putting corporate data at risk.”

“It’s about familiarity, access, and awareness. 39 percent of U.S. workers use consumer apps for business because they use them in their personal life. IT needs to secure data regardless of where it is stored and used. Moving security from the device to the document level allows IT to reduce the risk of data loss even in the personal cloud.”

The CSS enables the encryption of work documents when they are stored in the personal cloud, allowing the enterprise to set policies that prevent unauthorised use. It also allows the enterprise to set document expiration policies and selectively wipe specific documents on a device.

CSS also allows control of the uploading, downloading, editing, and sharing of those documents. For example, if a pricelist must be updated every 30 days, CSS is designed to ensure that the expired document is automatically wiped from the device, which is then updated with the new one.

Ojas Rege, VP Strategy MobileIron, said: “Mobile First CIOs realise that many employees store work documents in the personal cloud and that saying ‘no’ doesn’t change their behaviour.

“Our mission at MobileIron has always been to allow employee choice without compromising enterprise security. The MobileIron Content Security Service transforms the personal cloud from an IT nightmare to a powerful tool for employee productivity.”

Phase One of MobileIron’s personal cloud security initiative was launched in October 2014 to provide native access to cloud-based content repositories through the MobileIron Docs@Work mobile application.

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