BYOD Insights and Critical Security Controls for Your Business
Critical Insights on Mobile Security
Mobility is a fact of life for many businesses today. Whether a company is small, medium or large, ubiquitous mobile devices have the potential to boost productivity.
The mobile trend also presents the IT pros tasked with supporting an often-diverse array of smartphones and tablets with a host of management and security challenges, however. Not only must the devices themselves be secured from prying eyes, so, too, must the applications that run on them — and the networks to which they connect.
Businesses, meanwhile, must not count on users to actively secure their mobile devices. As Consumer Reports’ “2013 State of the Net” report reveals, almost 40 percent of smartphone users don’t employ even minimal security precautions. Further, a 2012 survey of 15 million mobile phone users by Lookout, a mobile security company, indicates that the typical U.S. consumer loses — on average — one handset a year. That’s a lot of personal, private and work data lying around, waiting to fall into the wrong hands.
So what’s an overburdened IT team to do? Take a holistic end-to-end approach to mobility. To learn about all aspects of mobile use, from concept to app development, check out the CDW Technology Insights app: biztechmag.com/mobileinsights.
It currently features a Total Mobility Management e-guide, which compiles numerous multimedia assets — from tips and case studies to how-to articles, case study videos and much more — all designed to help IT professionals at all levels of mobile expertise employ the best management and security practices for their needs.
is the average annual salary of IT professionals who have earned the Certified in Risk and Information Systems Control certification.
This makes CRISC, offered by ISACA (formerly the Information Systems Audit and Control Association), the top-earning certification for 2014.
SOURCE: “2014 IT Skills and Salary Survey” (Global Knowledge, October 2013)
Safe and Sound
Five guiding principles can form the basis of a successful cyberdefense system:
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Offense Informs Defense: Study attacks that have compromised real-world systems to glean useful details for shaping effective IT security practices.
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Prioritization: Weigh the value of corporate assets against the chance of those assets being tampered with or lost because of a cyberattack. Then, invest first in measures that provide the greatest degree of protection for those critical assets most at risk.
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Metrics: Institute metrics to provide a common basis for all stakeholders (IT specialists, auditors and security officials) to discuss and quickly respond to security components or programs that may need adjustment.
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Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation: Continuously measure and test security efforts to validate their effectiveness and help identify next steps.
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Automation: Automate defenses to achieve reliable, scalable and continuous collection of accurate metrics for monitoring the continued effectiveness of security controls.
A New Style of IT
Eric Trump learned during the renovation and transformation of the Trump National Doral Miami golf resort that technology is a key component to providing great customer service.
“It doesn’t matter how good your physical asset is; if you don’t have that kind of service, you really have nothing,” Trump says. “It’s being able to throw the best events where your lighting control systems are in a central hub that can be controlled” by any mobile device, for example.
Discover more about the role technology plays in business success from Trump and other business- and tech-industry heavyweights in BizTech’s Bring IT On Technology Leadership series at biztechmag.com/leadership.
My POV: More Devices, Less CORDS!
MyPOV: the inverse relationship between wireless devices and number of cords makes no sense. It should be more devices, less cords.
— R Ray Wang (@rwang0) March 12, 2014
The Internet allows any two individuals to transfer data without permission from any central authority. Bitcoin does the same for value.
— Naval Ravikant (@naval) February 21, 2014
I'll focus on #devops a million times before I would on #scrum or any other #agile methodologies. It's about doing, not planning #gsd #jfdi
— Elias Torres (@eliast) March 5, 2014
It's a shame folks don't RT more. RTs move the tweet forward, Favorites are where tweets go to die. You never look there again.
— Scott Hanselman (@shanselman) March 3, 2014
Twitter and Google Reader argued about what a blog post is. Google conceded. Onward! :-) http://t.co/W8iXoc5kFU
— Dave Winer ☮ (@davewiner) March 12, 2014
