Mobile Device Management

Smartphones are everywhere, and they are carrying vital corporate data, whether they are secured or not. With the exposure of 150,000 iPad owners' personal data recently, along with new reports that highlight Android security problems, opportunities abound for channel partners that can create a mobile-security practice for business customers.

Mass mobile-device infections might not be a very real threat today, but the catastrophic breach of data through the careless loss of a device certainly is. According to a survey released in April 2010 conducted by Osterman Research on behalf of Proofpoint, more than one in five U.S. companies investigated the exposure of confidential, sensitive or private information via lost or stolen mobile devices in the past 12 months. It turns out that 51 percent of companies are highly concerned about the risk of information leakage via e-mail sent from mobile devices.

Channel partners have a tremendous opportunity to help organizations develop and manage policies around how to deal with lost devices, how users interact with data through their mobile devices and how data is encrypted on those devices.

According to recent survey results, there is room for the mobile-device management market to grow. Most enterprises admit that they have no formalized processes or policies to manage mobile devices in place—however, many have device management penciled in to budgets for the near future.

Conducted by Applied Research on behalf of Symantec, one recent survey showed that only 38 percent of enterprise-class organizations have formal device-security policies in place. However, 33 percent of respondents did say they were moving toward formal policies. For the channel, this means that a good third of your potential enterprise clients are looking to spend money in this area.