One of the big discussions emerging around BYOD programs and the expanding use of mobile technologies like the iPhone and iPad is whether it’s a better approach to manage the device itself or simply the business data that’s on it. There are benefits and drawbacks to each approach and they aren’t mutually exclusive – IT can manage and lock down a device as well as create a secure sandbox on it to hold corporate data.
The one thing that both approaches have in common, however, is that they require some form of on-device solution (an agent for device management or an app/suite for information management). Even when an iOS device is deployed without a management agent, configuration data or profiles are still loaded on the device itself.
Mobilisafe is a new mobile management company (their flagship product is still in beta) that is taking a novel approach and developing a mobile management solution that don’t load anything onto mobile devices themselves.
Mobilisafe is designed to monitor traffic between mobile devices and enterprise systems. It also works with Exchange and Microsoft’s ActiveSync protocol, which allows some basic device management like the ability to enforce passcode requirements and to wipe lost or stolen devices, but it really doesn’t provide any serious security and management capabilities on its own. Mobilisafe sits on a web server and examines the data exchanges between a company’s Exchange server and/or other enterprise systems and the various mobile devices connecting to them using ActiveSync. It can also pull data out of Active Directory based on the individual devices and user accounts associated with them.
Mobilisafe can create a pretty robust picture of the devices accessing a corporate network. The software, which runs on the company’s cloud servers, can identify device types, OS version, and whether a device has been jailbroken or rooted. It can also tie that information to specific user accounts. That allows administrators to get a pretty clear picture of the devices on their networks.
Mobilisafe is more of a reporting tool than a proactive management solution, but its reporting capabilities do provide useful device security information. Mobilisafe can also block a device from accessing Exchange and/or other enterprise systems and it can alert both the user and IT staff to potentially unsafe situations like an out-dated OS or jailbroken device.
How effective Mobilisafe ultimately is compared to on-device management options is still an open question, though it seems a natural fit with companies that are focusing on information management as opposed to full device management. It also lets IT monitor BYOD devices to ensure they meet a security baseline without making any changes to those devices.
