Why is that iPhone on my network?
Using Ravica environmental monitoring products can help protect your network from the physical world but what about the new mobile world? Can your protect your network from the Smartphone cloud? Smartphones are all around us. The advent of the iPhone had brought their use to the forefront of the IT department. As a result there use has burdened the corporate network and become a big security risk. You can’t ignore the growth, recent surveys show that smartphone use is rising and should grow by 25% in the next three years.
So what do you do?
The influx of smartphones also creates a host of challenges for any IT pro seeking to manage that rapidly growing portion of the enterprise. Armed with the right information and tools, you can make sure that the true potential of a highly mobile workforce is realized.
Dawn the correct armor.
A smartphone can operate inside and outside of your firewall, similar to a laptop. Since you are using smaller operating system, and in some cases unique, your job becomes a little more difficult. So that means making sure your smartphone connections are secure is priority number one. I found a great article that explains how to secure your smartphones and the data that they access. Here is a similar white paper from ZDNET.
Manage your army:
So how do we manage smartphones when they are on and off of your network? Matt Bancroft from Smartphone Security Magazine tells us that, “like the laptops of remote workers, smartphones need to be catered to as a part of the network and subject to corporate management and security measures. It is essential that companies have a corporate IT management policy in place that takes these smart mobile devices into account.”
Three things IT departments must consider when smartphones are running enterprise applications are:
- Operational Continuity: Once employees are trained and start to rely on the applications on their phones, you need to make sure that they are running all the time. This means controlling the phone’s firmware and the other applications that run on it to ensure that it has 100% up time.
- Reducing Support Costs: You need to be able to take control of phones remotely or push files when needed. This can be extremely helpful.
- Security and Compliance: This includes backups to ensure data can’t be lost, and encryption or remote device wiping to protect data when a device is stolen or misplaced. It may also include communications controls, such as archiving SMS messages or preventing them altogether.
Management tools include Sybase with iAnywhere (for Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, Palm OS and Symbian), Logmein (for Windows Mobile, Symbian and BlackBerry shortly), and Microsoft with its Mobile Device Manager 2008 module, which is part of its System Center family of management products for devices running Windows Mobile 6.1.
Here are some items that you want to look for in your management application.
- Active Directory/Group Policy domain join
- Mobile VPN with dual-factor authenticated access
- Application allow and deny
- SMS, Bluetooth and camera disablement with Active Directory Group Policy-based targeting
- Over the air device provisioning and software deployment
- Device inventory and reporting
- Help desk console and role-based administration
- Device wipe
It’s clear that smartphones are becoming a more integral part of most enterprises. Today’s technology workers are more tech-savvy than ever The influx of smartphones also creates a host of challenges for any IT pro seeking to manage that rapidly growing portion of the enterprise. But armed with the right information and tools, you can make sure that the true potential of a highly mobile workforce is realized.
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Jim Dougherty aka “Jimmy D”
Lead PreSales Support Engineer and
Netflow Evangelist for Plixer International!
Follow me on Twitter
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Getting Support for your Ravica Products
All products from Ravica include comprehensive instructions and help features that can assist you in using your software, but if you get stumped on something or need more information, you can find more and get help on the Ravica website. This website includes a number of different pieces of information.
The main place to go for help is the support section of the Ravica site. Here, you’ll find the company’s standard business hours, their phone number, and an email form that you can fill out and send in. You’ll generally get a response within 24 hours of emailing the Ravica customer support center. If you’d rather call Ravica, note that their customer support line is available from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm Eastern time, so you’ll need to make allowances if you’re in a different time zone.
However, before you contact Ravica customer support, you may find the answer to your question in their online FAQ. This list of frequently asked questions does cover a large number of topics for many of Ravica’s programs. This is the first place to check for information regarding your Ravica program
Finally, if you’re not really looking for answers to a question but simply want more information on your product or on other Ravica products, you can check out their downloads section. Here, you can download detailed datasheets for each SensorProbe and Intelligent Sensors. These datasheets make it very easy to compare the various applications side by side and decide which one is right for your company.