Mobile apps on iPhones, Android phones and BlackBerries are now standard issue in most companies as employees are now generally expected to be available far beyond regular working hours. As more business communications and data moves through these mobile devices and app, the demands on a business network also change.
Until the arrival of mobile computing, users would generally access their business networks from company-issued laptops and desktops. Today, those same employees are probably accessing your email server from their mobile phones and using mobile apps like Roambi to take their business data with them wherever they go. All of this puts new demands on your network.
Security
As users begin to use third-party apps to connect to their business data, new pathways for cybercriminals are opened. A seemingly innocuous Android application, for example, could be used to gain access to a user’s personal information – and potentially also to valuable business information on the device. Many of these security vulnerabilities begin on the mobile device but their reach could easily extend to your own network.
Therefor, it is imperative that companies not only have the ability to remotely wipe a lost or stolen device, but that they actually have a certain degree of control over the deployment and configuration of these devices. More and more companies now allow their employees to choose their own mobile device and install any app they want on these, but without the right policies and security measures in place, this could quickly turn into a major security issue.
The fact that so many enterprise users now use unsecured public networks in airports and coffee shops to access your business’ network also means that network administrators have to enforce the use of VPNs and other security measures to ensure that the traffic that flows between the internal network and the mobile device can’t be intercepted.
More Data Moving Over the Network
The fact that the number of apps and mobile devices that need to access the network continues to increase also means that the network will have to cope with more demand than ever before. After the launch of the iPad, for example, some universities banned the devices from their networks as their Wi-Fi access points couldn’t handle the extra demand.
Apps That Connect to Your Data
While these are real problems for network administrators, mobile apps also enable a whole new range of functionality and access to data that was previously unthinkable. With Mellmo’s Roambi and Roambi ES, for example, employees on the road can now easily access data from your internal business intelligence systems wherever they are.
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