When it comes to IT strategy, mobile is often seen as a commodity that the business needs to spend the least amount of money on as possible.
However, as mobile technology becomes increasingly paramount to the success of the business through productivity gains, how you invest in your mobility strategy is crucial to maximising business performance.
We hear about businesses that suffer bill shocks and do not understand how and why they have ended up in such a position. This is often the case where inappropriate tariffs have been selected based purely upon base cost criteria.
The selection process usually takes place without considering what security measures are needed to protect the business, as well as the ways in which excess mobile utilisation costs could be minimised, this could be through implementing data compression or bespoke roaming tariff plans, for example.
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Taking responsibility for mobile strategy
Often IT teams are left out of the loop when it comes to mobile as it isnt seen as an integral part of the IT strategy. This could lead to a lack of understanding of what is required in terms of security across the mobile estate and no real consideration being given to product suitability as part of an overall IT strategy.
While most businesses are savvy enough to put in place a basic Mobile Device Management (MDM) solution, this is only the start of a successful enterprise mobility journey. The lack of true technical expertise in the decision making process creates far more opportunity to expose the business to risks that MDM can’t look after.
Every day across sectors such as legal, finance and professional services, and manufacturing staff will be moving between sites or working from a clients location, using either mobile data that your company pays for, or logging onto different WiFi sources to carry out their daily working tasks, without giving it a second thought.
The most successful mobile strategies look at every user individually and design the best mobile working environment, from device to data, for each staff member uniquely. This way it helps to ensure that each user is allocated the most appropriate tariff and best practices are being adopted wherever possible.
Read more on the next page to understand the decision-making process you should embrace and how employees will be using devices in order to make sure the investment is the right one.
The mobile strategy decision making process
When you are making a decision to invest in mobile technology, how far does your business go to include the people that will actually use that technology
Recent research has shown that the end-user is, more often than not, left out of the loop entirely when it comes to making decisions around new technology, which can create a significant amount of apathy.
Consequently, end-users dont truly buy into the device that they are given or dont take it seriously, which can lead to issues surrounding a lack of care or consideration for the risks of not managing what is used or stored on the phone itself.
Understanding how employees use mobile devices
Emails, calls, browsing and texts is the standard answer. However, when employees are emailing each other from their devices, have you ever stopped to consider what could be at stake
Unsecured document sharing, high data usage (particularly outside of the UK) and an unprotected handset are all potentially happening at the same time, exposing your business and commercially sensitive data to theft, bill shock and device hacking.
All too often, businesses focus on the mobile device itself when they look at security measures. Your MDM solution more than likely only focuses on device-level management, such as the ability to set policies for password requirements, identity management, network enablement and app distribution on each device.
They dont see that a mobile device is the same as any other piece of IT equipment that can touch your network, but the truth is there are just as many risks in the network aspects as there are on the device.
The risks of attaching devices to unknown networks
Logging on to WiFi sounds like a good way for your team to use their mobile devices remotely without using up mobile data. However, instead of focusing on the cost savings that allow your staff to do this, have you considered the costs of opening your technology to unknown networks and having potentially unencrypted communications being intercepted and used in unintended ways
Even encrypted data can still be obtained and then hacked into at a later date. Known as man in the middle attacks, they can cause unlimited damage to a business if they are able to intercept vital commercially sensitive data and use it to disrupt your business.
This article hopefully reinforces known beliefs regarding mobile communications security and highlights that investment in the right communications technology can drive significant business transformation through increasing the productivity of staff, as well as giving them better tools to perform their roles.
Chris Sharp is the financial director at Intercity Technology. Chris is a qualified chartered accountant who joined Intercity Technology in September 2011 after a successful six year career in practice with RSM Tenon. As finance director for Intercity Technology, Chris focuses on financial planning and forecasting to assist with business strategy. He has the ultimate responsibility for financial control and management reporting, which includes the overall control of financial transactions, monthly management reporting including operational KPIs, statutory reporting and taxation, and the management of insurance, banking and treasury relationships.
