Symantec Mobile Management Suite Adds Important New Capabilities

The Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) genie is out of the bottle. Put another way, “The horse has left the barn.” In the process, the phenomena has changed the security paradigm for enterprise IT professionals who are trying to keep up with the realities of losing control via the emergence of “shadow IT” as end-users look for and find non-authorized solutions to enable them to do their jobs faster and better. It is what can be characterized as “IT Anarchy.” The challenge of IT is to get back in control, i.e., find the policies, practices and right tools that enable their end-users to enjoy the convenience and benefits of using their BYODs inside the enterprise, while having the visibility and control they need to secure an increasingly complex environment where the vectors for bad guy malicious activities are exploding. The goal is keeping data, the enterprise and people safe.

Online security giant Symantec (News - Alert) is out with its Internet Security Threat Report. It highlights a 58 percent increase in mobile threats targeting these devices, with almost a third designed to steal information. This, as a slew of other recent reports demonstrate is actually not news. It is more confirmation of what IT feared when BYOD first appeared on the scene. The good news is that the security industry is stepping up to the challenges presented by BYOD, and Symantec is out with a number of new updates to the Symantec Mobile Management Suite that highlight the kinds of tools IT needs to provide the enterprise with better protection while simultaneously deriving the full benefits of all those smartphones and tablets.  

As Symantec says, “To truly keep business data safe in today’s increasingly complex IT environment, mobility solutions must be able to effectively address the challenges across multiple use cases. Companies need mobile device management (MDM) for some situations and mobile application management (MAM) for many others. Assuring the identity of the user is always important, and protecting data at rest and in motion is critical, but not always easy when you don’t control the device or the communications channels, as with BYOD.”

 As a result, Symantec recently integrated is Mobile Device Management (MDM) capabilities with its Mobile Applications Management (MAM) functionality into a single product and console. Enhancements now offered include:

Secure e-mail: A client forboth iOS and Android (News - Alert) platforms, providing safeguards to users’ e-mail, calendar, address book and to-do lists. Administrators can configure multiple policies specific to individual groups of users, including Exchange server and user names, passcode requirements, SSL requirements, copy and paste restrictions, widget controls, and synchronization and attachment size limits. This is a free e-mail client that can be easily configured and controlled through the Mobile Management Suite console.

 Single sign-on across wrapped apps: End-users can login once for access across multiple wrapped apps. Administrators can apply controls to this feature, such as designating time allowances for a single sign-on session. Authentication sources include LDAP and SAML, plus new integrations with Symantec O3 and CA (News - Alert) Siteminder.  As Symantec and others have touted, the benefit of single sign-on is two-fold – it improves the end-ser experience by simplifying authentication, and improves security by enabling broader usage of authentication controls. In fact, multiple authentications may be centrally managed more easily and tied to changes in group policies and authorizations.

 SSL policing and URL whitelisting for secure app connections: The addition ofSSL policing to the app-level policies and enforcing URL whitelist rules, means data in motion is encrypted and guaranteed to only be delivered to the server or service preconfigured by the business.

 In discussing these enhancements Symantec had some interesting observations about the current security landscaped that BYOD is helping restructure. It believes that the recent enhancements make the Symantec Mobile Management Suite – a single solution for MDM and MAM along with mobile security – are capable of addressing a broader range of mobile productivity use cases, while also meeting the demands for business data protection and personal privacy.  The company also contends that, “competitive technologies, such as sandboxing and mobile virtual machines, force a compromise on user productivity, privacy or both. Symantec doesn’t believe in “balancing” the productivity and flexibility needs of users against the data protection requirements of IT, or compromising on either charter; both must be executed to the highest degree. This is the secure coexistence of professional and personal that Symantec is delivering, all through a single, integrated solution.”

Just as BYOD is an inevitable trend, it seems clear based on the Symantec enhancements to its platform and a host of announcements from across the enterprise security that we are at a tipping point in terms of rethinking how IT delivers and controls security in terms of getting a handle holistically on managing people, devices, the apps on those devices, business process and practices, and the networks that enable data interchange. They all need to be protected, and visibility and better control are the keys.

For more about these trends, and what the industry and its users are doing, TMC’s (News - Alert) SecureIT: Protecting Your Enterprise in a BYOD World Conference and Expo, taking place on July 23 in New York City is a great place to learn more as well as join the discussion as to where we are, what is needed and what comes next. Hope you can join us.