The concept of mobility solutions emerges very rapidly with the concept of cloud computing. Cloud computing technology creates an unparalleled platform for organizations with Enterprise Mobility Solutions. This computing technology relies on the sharing of computing resources to handle applications instead of having personal devices.
Enterprise Mobility Suites allow the employees to access corporate data, applications and infrastructure from their personal devices, and reach their customers in a secure and effective manner.
The main benefit of enterprise mobility apps and BYODs, is to improve accessibility irrespective of user’s location. Leveraging cloud computing, companies would be able to authorize their own computing abilities to carry out other additional activities with the aim to increase the overall growth of an organization.
The other benefits of cloud with mobility solution are reliability, scalability, empowerment of employees, and real time updates. It therefore represents the opportunity for organizations to use available resources in an effective manner and to search out the company’s core objective.
Benefit of data mobility in the cloud environment are:
1. Cloud computing can improve visibility for the employers
Businesses are concerned about the employees wasting their time and company bandwidth, when using BYOD devices. The employees on the other hand are concerned about what personal data remains private. To alleviate their concerns, a BYOD policy should be communicated with all the workforces regarding the workplace activities on the business network and monitoring measures in place to ensure workers stay focused.
2. Data Mobility, BYOD and Cloud improves efficiency
Its well known that happy employees means improved productivity. When employees use their personal devices, they are more productive and as the cloud provides instant and easy access to the data, they can work from anywhere. Even if their devices are misplaced, stolen or broken, work can continue seamlessly from another device.
3. Desktop virtualization is possible
The future of cloud computing lies in desktop virtualization, where the employee will just have to sign in on their devices to access the cloud. The employer is assured that all data is secure as nothing is stored locally.
When a person moves onto a new position, he cannot take along with him any of the corporate data along with him. He’d simply take his preferred device to your next role, and receive new log-in details to access his new company’s system.
4. BYOD cuts costs
The BYOD concept along with cloud computing has resulted in reduced expenditure on the infrastructure and maintenance of the company devices, servers etc.
They don’t have to worry about repairing the employees laptops, smart phones etc, or paying their Internet charges. The cost of acquiring, maintaining an online-server is reduced as the cloud provides for all the computing power and required resources. As the cloud manages infrastructure, businesses can also run efficiently with fewer information technology experts.
5. Mobile virtualization adds extra security to BYOD cloud computing
The increased use of personal devices for office work, has resulted in having a thin layer of virtual software embedded between the applications and data, and the underlying hardware. It can deploy security rules and protection to safe guard the data which is present on the company profile created on that device. It can remotely disable access to this account if the device is damaged or stolen.
Concerns regarding BYOD in Cloud Computing
Usually the cloud benefits overweighs the security and safety concerns that data mobility and BYOD brings. When you use the BYOD devices, you need to take care of special circumstances which will help to protect the corporate data without compromising on the productivity. While you cannot ignore the benefits of BYOD, there are some issues which have to be addressed by the cloud providers or the cloud solutions.
1. Device physical security
The first concern which all the organizations fear most, is the loss of the device. If this device has access to the sensitive data, apps or network, then your business is compromised. You can remotely wipe all the data stored in the device, by setting cloud security policies and rules. This will remove all the data, but still there is danger of the hacker from recovering the data.
2. Data Security
Ensuring the data is secure is part of the BYOD concept. You have to secure your device through PINS, strong passwords and authentication. All the cloud providers offers storage protection through Multifactor Authentication, device authentication. An obvious solution is to not store data on the personal devices at all.
A business can lose control over its data, through third party software services present in the employee’s BYODs. Businesses need the protection of a cloud that can offer hardened and customizable public, private and hybrid clouds.
3. Application Security
Many of the businesses use the cloud-based applications to support major business processes. This poses a security threat as many of them have excessive permissions that lets them access information like contacts, geo-location data and more. Sometimes they may transfer business data to other apps (malicious or not).
This can be mitigates by Cloud virtualization where the user uses the applications present in the cloud. This lets the apps and the data to be decoupled from the underlying hardware without compromising on the functionality or security.
4. Network Security
Another concern is the security breach of their Wi-Fi network. Data mobility means the ability to access the data from anywhere. Usually this is through free Wi-Fi networks which are unsecure. If your network connections are not handled carefully, open wireless points can expose BYOD users to man-in-the-middle attacks and other forms of cyber hacking.
You can prevent this by adding encryption at all levels of data usage, particularly during the in-transit phase. Use secure VPN, HTTPS servers which will enable a secure network.
5. Security Compliances
Mobility brings with it compliance issues. There are several business which expects strict compliances like HIPAA, and others, which is are costly. To ensure compliances, it is better to opt for government audited services.
Sysfore can help you ensure Data Mobility in the Cloud Environment in a secure, and seamlessly fashion. You contact us at info@sysfore.com or call us at +91-80-4110-5555 and we’ll get back to you.