Recapping The Mobile Device Management and Security Session at Interop

I hate red-eye flights home from Las Vegas.  As I get older, there’s a real reason why it’s called a red-eye.  The flight home, your typical jam packed flight where we humans impersonate sardines, had its own uniqueness that is probably not appropriate to share on this site.  But in any case, another week, and another eventful trip.  I just came back from the Interop show in Las Vegas, where I had the opportunity to participate in one session on general enterprise mobility trends, as well as moderate a session on mobility policy, security and device management.  The title: “Operating at the Edge: Mobile Device Security, Management and Policy.”  The description:

With the increasing diversity of mobile devices, applications, and missions, it’s more important than ever to have the necessary policies, procedures, and operational systems in place to manage mission-critical and rapidly-growing mobile activities. This session will examine the key requirements in each of these areas, including a checklist of required policies and an examination of mobile device management and mobile policy management alternatives.

My star studded panelists included:

• Todd DeLaughter – CEO, Mformation
• Eric Januszko – CTO, ProfitLine
• Sunil Marolia – VP, Product Management, Smith Micro Software
• John Marshall – CEO, AirWatch

Here are some of the more interesting highlights of the session.

• First of all, the room was packed.  At one point, it was standing room only.  This, in and of itself was noteworthy.  It’s not the first time I have moderated this session at Interop, but it is the first time that the room was completely filled.  No….it was not in a smaller room.  There were actually about 150 people in the audience.  What this tells me is that, for all our talking about how enterprise mobility and mobility management are “real,” the proof was in the size of the audience.  People are looking to grapple with mobility in the workplace TODAY.
• Almost 1 in 3 members of the audience have a mobility policy in place.  That was a surprisingly high number.  The flip-side however is that still, 2 in 3 organizations do NOT have a mobility policy.  This needs to change sooner rather than later, in my opinion.
• About 90% of the members in the audience said they supported a heterogeneous mobility environment….and surprisingly, 10% of attendees were still BlackBerry-only shops – but not surprisingly, those were 100% corporate liable environments in regulated industries.
• Some organizations are vacillating between individual and corporate liable devices…meaning, they went full IL, and are now switching back to full CL….although providing more choice in terms of mobile platform support.
• There were a number of people concerned with the security of the Android platform…and unfortunately, it’s an issue that remains unresolved.
• All the panelists agreed that the most important issue moving forward was managing and securing the data on devices, regardless of who owns the device.
• Security – what is security?  In the mobility context, it’s not the same as what the CSO is typically used to.  Full command and control doesn’t “work” because it hinders our ability to use “our” devices (regardless of who officially owns them).  In some cases, PIN lock may be “enough.”
• Tablets – there’s an interesting emerging trend where tablets could end up being typically provided by the workplace (with standard support offerings) all the while providing employees the ability to use whatever smartphone they want.  This dichotomy will be an interesting trend to track moving forward.
• How do you deal with the CEO who does not want to comply with the mobility policies that have been put in place?  Personally, I believe that if you don’t have top-down support for your company’s mobility strategy, it’s destined for failure.  No executive buy-in?  Non starter.

So there you have it.  It was a great session, and could have gone on well past the allotted hour.  Hopefully, people will continue the conversation on this little site.