While grappling with complex problems is the norm for today’s CIOs rather than the exception, there is a particularly difficult and urgent issue that is causing growing concern both inside and outside the space: finding a way to secure and deploy MAM for corporate BYOD use.
To start with, whereas enterprise mobile apps were once seen as optional, it is clear that they are increasingly being viewed as essential. For example:
Healthcare organizations such as New York’s Mount Sinai Medical Hospital are using mobile apps to help clinicians improve workflow communication efficiencies. And with the global market for health apps expected to reach $26 billion by 2017, the trend will only intensify. Insurance providers such as Freedom Health have streamlined operations and increased performance by equipping their sales agents with a mobile app for completing insurance applications while out in the field.
Sales professionals are using mobile apps to access updated customer account information, and to run analytics and forecasting tools that clearly and often convincingly show customers why they should “close the deal’.
However, while this trend bodes very well for mobile app developers, as noted above, many CIOs are concerned. They know that mobile apps are notoriously insecure, and that cyber criminals are increasingly targeting this vulnerability. And therein lays the dilemma: on the one hand, CIOs cannot expose their enterprise to data leakage hazards or regulatory non-compliance risks. And on the other hand, more and more employees want, need and increasingly expect access to mobile apps and enterprise data.
In light of this, many enterprises have tried restricting certain mobile app features and functions. However, the gains are more than offset by the fact that employees loathe this, since it means they no longer get a full-featured native app experience. Plus, certain functions can take tediously long, and routing all traffic through a corporate VPN rapidly drains battery life. And on top of this, some BYOD employees deeply resent — or outright reject — their device being in any way manipulated or controlled by the IT department.
While this dilemma has been the cause of many CIO headaches over the last few years (and more than a few boardroom blow-ups!), there is finally a mobility solution that gives both the enterprise and employees what they want, instead of one or the other: Appdome.
Appdome involves creating a dynamic library, and augmenting a binary that controls how a mobile app behaves, which ultimately makes it more secure. For example, Appdome can authenticate the corporate servers without interfering with the user, automatically route confidential data to the corporate VPN, restrict usage to a particular network or area, or carry out a variety of other data leakage prevention-related functions such as encryption of all data at rest and in-motion and also allow maintaining the regulatory requirements by auditing all actions done with the enterprise data.
Yet what fundamentally makes Appdome part of the solution rather than the problem is that it allows enterprises to make minimally invasive “pinpoint” changes to apps. As a result, users enjoy the native app experience they expect.
In addition, Appdome does not require changes to the mobile app’s source code or any integration with a SDK, which means that data leakage prevention policies and procedures can be automatically adjusted on an app-by-app basis, without having to re-distribute the app. And if employees lose their device or if it is stolen, Appdome allows enterprises to remotely wipe local data and completely block app access.
Ultimately, Appdome is part of an EMM or MAM solution that both CIOs and employees need, because it provides robust yet flexible mobility enablement and enhances organizational productivity without compromising the app’s native user experience and enterprise data security.
Appdome uses patented technology to secure all mobile apps and their data with an enterprise-grade security layer that requires no source code modifications or SDK integrations. Employees enjoy a completely native user experience, while enterprises prevent data leakage and ensure relevant regulatory compliance (e.g. HIPPA, SOX and PCI).
