The majority of IT departments have come to terms with the fact that employees will use their personal mobile devices. Instead of fighting a losing battle, they have found ways to mitigate the risks and bring everyone into the fold with policies they can manage. Still, as more organizations deploy BYOD initiatives, the issues that initially kept many companies from jumping aboard still persist: security and accessibility. A company that has come to terms with these facts but still sees the benefits of BYOD in today’s ecosystem is Denso, one of the largest automotive parts manufacturer in Japan. The company chose MobileIron, an enterprise mobile security expert, to securely integrate the hundreds of iOS devices of its employees.
MobileIron is going to give Denso the solution it needs to secure and manage its full-scale BYOD program. This includes secure email support, which is an important function for the company as its employees outside of the office access critical information and business processes they need.
“We realized that the ability to use email and check schedules from outside the company would be essential for the transition to a work style that places no limits on time or location. We wanted to use mobile devices to increase productivity so that we could be more competitive in overseas markets,” said Masahide Kobayashi, general manager of the IT infrastructure office at Denso.
The decision to go MobileIron was based on the company’s track record, dependable support, mobile device management features and an enterprise mobility management architecture for supporting application containerization and content management, this according to Tetsuhiro Nakane, assistant manager of the information security planning section at Denso.
MobileIron will be providing its mobile device management (MDM) as well as Web@Work, a mobile data security solution. This platform allows employees to collaborate securely outside of the office by providing a secure browser that delivers access to internal Web resources quickly and easily.
Key features of Web@Work are:
It protects the data - both in rest and in motion - on the device, and if a device is lost or stolen, the Web@Work application and its data can be wiped remotely.
User-based configuration lets IT administrators use the policies, users, roles, groups, and permissions set in MobileIron to define and silently push Web@Work configuration.
Browser-exclusive tunnel can limit user access to internal Web resources based on their group membership in the enterprise directory or other user and device characteristics. Failure to comply will automatically block access until the compliance issue is resolved.
Containerized data-at-rest with browser cache, cookies, history, and other website data encryption which are subject to wipe depending on device compliance.
DLP controls to prevent corporate data leaking to unsecured applications can be applied, such as restriction to ‘Open In’ and Copy/Paste.
With the security solutions available in the market place, such as MobileIron, not having a BYOD initiatives as part of an organization’s IT infrastructure is counter intuitive in today’s business environment. There are just too many benefits for the organizations, employees, partners and customers. Granted initially it was dangerous, and to some extent it still is, but there are many countermeasures to safely integrate the personal devices of employees without jeopardizing company assets.
Edited by
Dominick Sorrentino 
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