Taking it with you: mobile working and consumerization

Mobile computing is no longer a trend but a way of life for most businesses. 54% of the organizations we surveyed anticipated that their remote users will increase in numbers in 2011. In part, this is driven by employees demanding remote access to business applications, data and resources – connecting from both corporate and personally-owned devices.

The majority of organizations surveyed were also concerned that growth in remote users will result in exposure to sensitive data – with security threats including unauthorized network access and user management complexity.

In 2011, attackers will identify new ways to obtain data from mobile devices, encouraging enterprises to adopt new solutions that give employees secure mobile access to the corporate network, and that work across a range of mobile devices running on Apple, Android, Symbian and Windows PC platforms.

Fixing leaks and losses

As seen by the leak of hundreds of thousands of sensitive US documents to WikiLeaks, enterprises need to do more to protect their sensitive data, both from external and internal parties. This incident is yet another reminder to businesses that a layered and holistic approach to security is important in order to move data loss from detection to prevention.


In 2011, it’s likely that businesses will explore methods of protecting data across multiple layers, including data-at-rest, data-in-motion, and data-in-use.

Document security adds a fourth layer of protection throughout the data lifecycle. Document security can provide IT administrators (or end-users) granular control over who can view, open, send or even print confidential information – in order to prevent the misuse, modification, loss or theft of sensitive information. It’s likely that businesses will look to flexible solutions that enable tailoring of security infrastructures to their exact needs.

In summary, trying to make firm predictions about the future is risky. But it’s riskier still to do nothing about the ever-changing threat landscape presented by malicious parties, or trusted employees that make a simple mistake. The one prediction a company can’t afford to make is that a security breach will never happen to them.