This year, the security of confidential information on mobile devices is a top concern for companies across the world. Executives are being urged to finalize mobile security strategies while IT departments are in the drivers seat for implementation. Screw-ups will assuredly have a lasting backlash on the parties that fail to prepare. To add to the stress, data growth is running rampant and the release of lost and stolen information has become more damaging with each new headline. The margin for error is thin indeed.

If your company has made major systematic changes, taken a closer look at its processes, or made changes to how it uses technology, you shouldn’t be surprised. These are all reactionary moves in face of a quickly changing landscape. For many companies, addressing the growing number of mobile workers has been the biggest struggle.

Every day, new devices equipped with new technology and sensitive data are connecting to the corporate network, spelling out potential for disaster for many CIOs. Who could blame them for being paranoid? The security of data is too important to ignore.

Take for example the results of a poll conducted by the Dimensional Research for Check Point Software Technologies. 71% of IT professionals believe an uptick in security events experienced by their company during the past two years can be attributed to increased mobile device use. On that point, 78% said they’ve seen such use of smartphones and tablets double in that time.

At first glance, it seems as if there’s a connection between the security incidents and the increased use of devices, or the iPads, iPhones, and Androids being brought to work by employees. Cloud computing, “hacktivism”, and mobility have brought a lot of change to the world of enterprise IT in recent years; the more reliant companies become on these new technologies and ideas, risk will continue to increase.

What we are unsure of, however, is the mobility environment of each IT professional polled, and what tools they were using at work. Without knowing, how can we attribute the rise in data breaches to smartphones and tablets? A mobile device management (MDM) solution allows proper implementation of a given mobile security strategy while giving the director the means to oversee their device inventory. In other words, it provides peace of mind in place of frustration.

What is your company doing to manage the mobile devices connecting to the corporate network? If devices are being kept at home as a preventative measure, you could be missing out on potential for increased productivity and a practical means for doing work. Share your story with us in the comments below.

This brings up a lot of issues for any industry where privacy and security is important. You want to make sure you know exactly where account information is and who has access to it. For banks and credit unions, the penalties for lost data can be severe.

You’ll need policies that give data access to those who truly need it. Policies that require passcodes, encryption, and more. Did you know that early versions of some platforms have very few security features? Policies, if enforced correctly, can be used to keep devices on later versions of the software.

Alerts are helpful, too. Would your IT department like to know when a device is jailbroken or rooted? How about when a user exceeds the threshold on their monthly data plan? Mobile Device Management (MDM) can do all this and more.

A good MDM solution lets you:

• Enforce passcode type, complexity, length and how often they have to be changed
• Specify if users can set their devices to show the text of the passcodes when they enter them
• Specify if the data on the device must be encrypted (when supported by the manufacturer)
• Turn off device features like the camera, Bluetooth, and tethering
• Blacklist, approve or require certain apps
• Specify enforcement actions that will be taken automatically if the device is out of compliance
• Securely push apps to devices
• Securely push documents to devices and prevent them from being forwarded, if necessary
• Perform actions on the device, including:
  • Remote wipe
  • Remote lock
  • Block
  • Locate
  • Reset passcode

For Financial institutions, it’s not enough to say that your devices are secure. You have to be able to prove it if you need to. If a device with financial information is lost, you’ll need to be able to prove that the device was encrypted, or that it was wiped after the loss was reported.

You’ll need to be able to see:

• All the software and apps installed
• If the device is fully encrypted
• The history of the device, including if it has been wiped
• The total roaming mobile data usage for the last six months
• Whether devices are owned by your institution or by the user
• If the device is jailbroken or routed (a potential source of malware)

The bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend has picked up a lot of steam in recent months and doesn’t look to be slowing down any time soon. Technological advances, a growing number of mobile workers, and gadget affordability have all played a role in the takeoff process. In some ways this trend presents cause for concern; an increasing number of employees are sitting in their company’s drivers seat and calling the shots in ways they shouldn’t be. The device-types supported in a given corporate environment are no longer stemming from the will of the IT director. In many cases the line is being drawn by the employees who are bringing their personal-owned devices to the office.

InfoWorld expert Galan Gruman has made note of common problem areas and provided a few tips for how your organization can derive benefit and forget the troubles:

Gruman insists we can’t be naive. From his vantage point, companies have one thing in mind when making the transition to BYOD: money. Increased productivity and satisfaction born of BYOD programs are an added benefit, and that’s all. “Their goals are naive, so what should be viewed as a positive outcome isn’t. The problem is not that BYOD itself is negative, it’s that many companies do it for the wrong reason and don’t get what they wanted.” To remedy the problem, companies must define clear, concise, attainable goals that cover all aspects of mobility.

Gruman’s second point involves the cost of supporting your mobile workforce. The costs of BYOD can add up when mobile expenses aren’t managed properly. For this reason, Gruman rejects expensing bills in favor of flat rates. Why? No company could ever rid itself of its mobility costs; the company can always expect to receive requests for compensation of some kind. When this happens, Gruman advises not to allow your employees to fill out expense reports. These will add up from processing fees alone. Instead, companies should add a flat rate or a mobility stipend onto their employees’ paychecks each month. That way, they get the money required to pay their wireless bills and the company meets its goal of saving on mobility costs.

How do you BYOD at your company? If you aren’t factoring in any of Gruman’s advice, why not? Take some time now to think why you are managing your devices the way you are, and decide whether its the best option going forward. If you aren’t sure, maybe your workforce is. Perhaps consider sending out a survey to determine what your employees would prefer. After you have your strategy set, make sure you implement it in the most cost effective way you can to attain maximum benefit.

Part of what made the iPhone 4S so great was timing. It was released right on cue with upgrades to iOS software and shortly before the passing of a legend in Steve Jobs (and unexpectedly so). One of many ways people chose to pay tribute to Jobs was by purchasing his last great device. Others wanted to take full advantage of the iOS 5 software…more specifically, Siri. The timing and its influence on consumers is what lead to a record-breaking 4 million sales 3 days after its release.

So the question is, how will Apple carry this momentum into 2012? What factors will weigh in on our decision to buy their iPhone 5?

It may not be what the phone brings the people that drives them to buy it. This time around it could be more simple; the phone will be brought to the people. Present day, there are only 3 carriers that offer the iPhone to customers. Combined, these networks contract with the majority of our country’s smartphone users, but that’s not to say the iPhone’s reach can’t and won’t expand. What if all 3G and LTE networks across the world could offer their customers an iPhone?

Katy Huberty of Morgan Stanley reports the iPhone 5 could arrive as early as Q3 2012, feature a slimmer design, and a “quad-mode chip from Qualcomm that would allow for 3G and LTE functionality across all ‘network flavors’”. If this holds true, Apple would have no problem picking up their success right where they left off when they introduced the 4S. Imagine how many people wanted to buy a 4S but couldn’t because their network didn’t offer it. Hubety added if Apple signs a deal with China Mobile–the world’s largest mobile phone operator–the inclusion of the chip in the iPhone 5 would be all the more likely. We will have to wait and see.

What do you think Apple will do to continue the success they had in Fall ’11? The phone will undoubtedly boast its share of new features, that we can always be sure of. But going back to my point about bringing the phone to the people, adding a few hundred million potential subscribers to the mix couldn’t hurt. It could be what really “does it” for them this time.

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) eliminates the need to install applications on the customer hardware. SaaS applications are typically accessed from a web browser and a single instance of the application often serves all the customers. Since the same application instance needs to fulfill different needs for different customers and there may be no option of creating a custom build for each customer, customizability of SaaS applications becomes an important aspect for delivering personalized software to the users. Customizability enables easy integration of the SaaS application with the customers existing systems and also empowers partners and resellers to easily configure the solution according to their and their customer’s requirements.

In one of our last posts, we discussed some of the key architecture tenets of a SaaS application – multi-tenancy, customizability, scalability, and security. This post focuses on different customization techniques that we have used in MaaS360 to make it flexible and configurable to address our customers’ and partners’ needs.

1. Look and Feel of a UI: Look and feel is one of the most important types of customizations for a SaaS product. Why?

• Firstly, it provides an option to the customer or a partner to brand the software
• Secondly, by changing the font, colors, and images used in the system, one can make it look similar to the existing systems that the user is familiar with

So, how do you ensure that the look and feel of your application is customizable?

By using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) for styling the web pages rather than hard-coding the styles within the HTML or JSP. 

Create a set of CSS files that define the default look and feel of your application. For customization, these CSS files can be overridden at a reseller or customer level to personalize elements like colors, fonts, backgrounds etc. The application should pick up the appropriate CSS file based on the user. Images displayed on your web pages can also be customized by storing different images in the file system or the database and picking the relevant image based on the user context.

Apart from the web pages, emails sent by the system to the user can also be customized for content, sender, subject, logos, links and signatures. We highly recommend creating email templates for emails that need to be configured per customer requirements.

So how does this work?

Most of the modern programming languages provide a library to format the date/time/number etc. based on a user’s locale. Make sure you are not hard-coding the display formats but format it based on the logged in user’s context and locale using the in-built functions.

Content localization can be achieved by using language resource bundles in your code. All the language specific content should be isolated from the web pages, so rather than hard-coding English strings in the web pages you should use constants that are replaced by the relevant text at runtime based on the user’s locale and language. If your application uses a database to display the content, the data model must be designed to store the content for each supported locale.

3. Role-based Access: It is critical for a SaaS application to provide different levels of access for different users. For example, in the MaaS360 portal, a Master Administrator can create, publish and assign policies to devices whereas a Help Desk Engineer can only assign policies. Similarly, a customer must be able to customize a user’s role by adding/removing access to certain workflows. It is also important that all portal actions are audited with the user and time information.

MaaS360 achieves this by adding support for role-based access in the application. A set of roles are defined for the application with each role having a set of permissions for different modules of the application. All the application modules check for the required permission before providing access to a workflow or functionality. A user can be assigned one or more roles. When a user logs in, he gets access to the workflows based on the roles assigned to him.

Customizability of a SaaS application can be a big pain if the above points are not well discussed and understood during the design and planning phase. By following these you can ensure that your application is ready for adoption by partners, resellers and customers.

Is your enterprise facing any specific issue while adopting customizability for your SaaS applications? Are there any points you would like to add? Looking forward to learning based on what you share from your experiences.

by John Harrington, Fiberlink

It’s been about a year since BlackBerry first rolled out the PlayBook, which is a while when considering RIM left its flagship tablet’s users without a native mail client that whole time. PlayBook users will be relieved to hear this is due to change when version 2.0 OS upgrades are released in February (Business Insider reports). Other upgrades to email will include the popular all-in-one inbox feature and rich text editing. Finally, it seems RIM has chosen to step up their tablet game to keep up with the competition.

So what does this mean for you? If you’ve been tethering to your BlackBerry device to access mail on your PlayBook, you’ll soon be able to cut cord and work solo on either device…and those who never had a BlackBerry in the first place will be able to get some real work done on the go.

RIM has taken the opportunity to address other shortcomings in this software update by making improvements to messaging and contact management. Once these features are enabled, the contacts on your PlayBook will be synchronized with corresponding account information on social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. So if one of your LinkedIn connections is attending our next webinar, you will know about just by viewing your calendar. Similarly, if your co-worker sends out an event invite for a Superbowl party to everyone at the office on Facebook, you will be able to see who RSVP’d (and coordinate on what to bring).

How do you feel about this upcoming software release? Will it put the PlayBook in better position to compete with up-and-comers in the tablet market? Or do you feel these moves will be insignificant in the long-run?

While the best of us remain pondering about a good new year’s resolution, Small & Medium Business leadership seem to have theirs all figured out. Based on the NPD Group‘s latest report, businesses with 1,000 employees (or less) plan to invest in tablets in a big way over the next twelve months. And this isn’t a trend among few; roughly three quarters (73%) of SMBs are on-board.

Here are the major findings from the survey…

The percentage of SMBs that intend to purchase tablets in 2012:

- 54% of <50 employee companies
- 70% of 50-200 employee companies
- 81% of 201-500 employee companies
- 89% of 501-999 employee companies

The percentage of SMBs that plan to increase or maintain spending:

- 88% of <50 employee companies
- 83% of 50-200 employee companies
- 91% of 201-500 employee companies
- 90% of 501-999 employee companies

The amount that will be spent on tablets in 2012:

- $1,912 per <50 employee company
- $10,122 per 50-200 employee company
- $27,031 per 201-500 employee company
- $38,749 per 501-999 employee company

Aside from these staggering figures pulled from their survey, NPD also found that the ”iPad purchase preference is higher among larger firms than smaller ones, which is an important indicator that Apple is gaining traction far outside its typical consumer space.”

If this sounds like your company, keep your eyes peeled for new iPads this year. These spending projections speak volumes about the consumerization of IT, and the prevalence of mobile device use in the workplace. Are you fit to handle this influx of tablets? Register for our webinar on January 5th and learn the best practices for enabling iPhones and iPads at work.

What are you using to get the job done today? Whatever it is, chances are you’d be reluctant to go back to a typewriter and briefcase packed with handwritten contents. Tablets, smartphones, desktops and laptops are here to stay. They’ve worked their way into our routine in so many ways that it makes it difficult to grasp the hard truth. That being, the more ways we use these devices the more risk they present us. An overwhelming number of organizations have overlooked this risk… but why? Perhaps the edge these devices provide us is the very thing that blinds us. The worst part is, the stakes have never been higher.

As newspaper headlines continue to report, the cons can indeed beat out the pros in the long run. An unplanned accident can steal away more than just your devices–your time, finances, and a once good reputation are sure to follow. Many times this damage is too hard to overcome. If you’re unprepared, you’ll have nowhere to turn or hide when your day comes.

You may find yourself smirking with this ‘better safe than sorry’ position, but take a real-life, worst-case-scenario into consideration and learn what happened to the Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative. This 35 person not-for-profit company was blindsided not more than a year ago when its hope to do good went terribly wrong. Their plan was to help hospitals convert their handwritten patient records into electronic documents, making the workday a whole lot easier and transfer of information much more efficient. But ponder what happens when this information falls into the wrong hands…

After receiving a phone call from a distressed employee about his stolen device, it was already too late for Micky Tripathy. 600 hours and $280,000 later, there is still irreparable damage to his organization’s reputation. Micky has since mandated that all files entering and leaving their devices are done so both purposefully and with encryption. This new strategy will make unfortunate recurrences unlikely in the future, but these right steps were taken at the wrong time.

Of the many things that have become obsolete with the information age, peace of mind wasn’t one of them. And it doesn’t look to be going anywhere anytime soon… so what is your company doing to avoid crises such as this? Do you have the right strategy in place to avoid a financial and reputational backlash as a result of your technology? Do you have a way to wipe or partially wipe your employees’ phones? Enforce passwords in case they fall into the wrong hands? Or a way to locate them when they are lost or stolen? Share with us your story, and what your doing to keep your devices and their files secure.

In round one, we broke the two tablets out of their boxes and shared our initial impressions. In round two, our contenders showed us what they were made of as we cross-compared their tech specs. In round three, you learned what it would be like to use each of these tablets at home or the workplace. Now for the round you came to see: IT management capabilities! (if you haven’t already, I highly recommend you watch a recording of the event here)

Jon took a swing at the kindle fire early in round four, highlighting the iPad 2′s maturity in device management support. IT directors from all around will find this tablet easiest to support; it has been around the longest and has had more time to adapt. This tablet is comfortable with iOS versioning, supports encryption, and supports both US carriers (i.e. AT&T, Verizon) and those abroad (GSM). Unlike the kindle fire, Apple’s premier tablet offers best-in-class enterprise features, such as seamless Exchange support, adaptations to the MS Office Suite, VPN and Certification Support, and easy setup for enterprise app management.

Since its mid-November release, the kindle fire has begun showing its face in the enterprise, but has a while to go until it can reach the level of the iPad 2. There are some problems we recognized right off the bat. You’ll find that the remote enforcement of a passcode cannot be set. Since there is no fragmentation, some question marks do exist: What will we be able to do with it? And how will we manage it? There is no certainty surrounding the next OS update for the kindle fire, so these questions will remain on the tablet until then.

As mentioned in round three, the kindle fire requires a little extra effort to access corporate mail, but it can be done. Installation of a third party application makes this possible. Lotus Notes Traveler is currently unavailable on the kindle fire, but IBM is currently investigating how it could be supported in a future release. Most Exchange policies will however work on the device (Donna was able to test for passcode enforcement using TouchDown by NitroDesk). You can also block, approve, auto-quarantine, and perform a selective wipe on the Amazon kindle fire.

So at the conclusion of our match, how do you feel about the contenders? Has this brawl helped you determine which is right for you? If not, our panelists laid out a few suggestions to aid you with your selection…

-If you are in education: digital textbooks, educational apps, and media may be great on the kindle fire

-If you are in healthcare: wheeling in wire-dependent televisions and laptops may be a thing of the past. The kindle fire is easy enough to manage and afford that they could replace current means for assisting patients in their recovery periods.

-If you are in sales: the iPad 2 is great when you are on the go and need to prepare and edit corporate content for future presentations. It is also good for devices that require more robust and proven security features.

So who’s the winner? Evaluate your specific needs and use cases and consider buying a hybrid model. If you have the option to buy both devices, do it! As we’ve shared, you can find ways to fill your gaps with the more affordable kindle fire while using the iPad 2 in situations where there is no better alternative. Let us know what you’re thinking in the comments below.

Herein lies Round 3 of the tablet showdown, and perhaps the most interesting part of the debate for users themselves. Where our opening rounds covered the physical tablets–how they appear out of the box and their tech specs–this round covers what your interaction would be like with the device in the context of your home or office. After reading this post, you should have a pretty good idea of which tablet is best suited for you in either respect. If you are in the mood to listen rather than read, you can always watch a recording of the event here (Note: Round 3 begins 22 minutes and 10 seconds into the video).

Let’s jump in to how the iPad 2 works in the business world. Jon began this round by describing its maturity…a tablet that has been in the enterprise for well over a year. The iPad 2 features seamless mail integration which is not only easy to set up, but easy to use. This is one way it overshadows its adversary in the enterprise; the kindle fire requires a 3rd party mail client to use Exchange ActiveSync (which I will get into more later on in the post). The iPad 2 also enables you to consume information and content on the screen in a fun and quickly digestible fashion. From a marketplace perspective, there are enough apps that you will never run out (and you’ll find plenty you can use at work). Ensuring all of your bases are covered, if you (somehow) can’t find the right app, Apple has made it easy to develop in-house apps. The iPad’s 3G option is yet another way it excels beyond the capabilities of the kindle fire, allowing you the option of 3G OR Wi-Fi. Lastly, the iPad 2 has a toolset that makes the device “enterprise-ready” from a management and security perspective–something that the kindle fire cannot compete with having been around for half a month.

In your personal life, you’ll enjoy the iPad 2 for its long battery life, its large screen, and its diverse selection of games, music, TV shows, all via iTunes store. If you have Apple TV, the iPad 2 is capable of interfacing with it. With the iOS 5 operating system update came iCloud, which allows you to take a picture on your iPhone and find it right on your iPad 2 (if you enable auto-syncing between your devices over the cloud). Another entertainment advancer is its iTunes match, which matches the music in your library with the music available on iTunes, then permitting you to listen to it over iCloud (pretty nice of Apple, don’tcha think?)

Though there aren’t very many of them, there are still a few cons that come with using an iPad 2. For one, you probably shouldn’t buy it just to replace your laptop. It may be better to keep your laptop and use iCloud to sync all of your files between your devices. People may be getting better at creating content on these devices, but there are limitations…areas where a laptop do still come in handy. Another problem is the gray line between personal use and business use. For some, this is the best thing that ever could have happened (embracers of the bring-your-own-device revolution). For others this is more of a touchy subject. These folks tend to prefer a separation between their time on the clock and their free time. Lastly, the iPad 2 is very expensive (as are its accessories). It lives up to its high price, but it should not be purchased if it won’t be used for what its worth!

To maintain some suspense, I saved the most mysterious of the two tablets for the end. Most of our viewers were anxious to know what will happen when kindle fires enter the corporate workplace…an answer to which may still take time to develop. For now, I can still cover what we know about the kindle fire at work:

This tablet is much more affordable than the Apple alternative. If your business is planning to buy a few tablets to enhance employee productivity, they can go for a larger number of these by going with the fire. When it comes to the fire apps, Amazon took a very well-guarded approach, offering a much less diverse interface from the Android Market (with this argued drawback comes less risk of questionable apps being introduced to your corporate network). If you enable the Silk browser to cache your activity, over time it will improve in speediness as it learns what you are using it for. As far as size, the fire is small and portable enough to throw right in the bag you use to carry around your laptop. And like your laptop, if you want to read your .pdfs, .docs, and .ppts on it–no problem!

At home, the kindle fire continues to impress. It features a large content ecosystem (everything Amazon), Whispersync (which enables picking up your book where you left off on your tablet from your phone), free cloud storage (not unlimited but a huge amount), and email capability.

As I already mentioned, the kindle fire hasn’t been around very long; you’ll find it does have its limitations at work and at home. It has a smaller screen than the iPad 2, a limited suite of business apps, and no 3G option. If you want to access your corporate mail (Exchange ActiveSync) from your fire, you’ll need to do so through a 3rd party mail client. Donna recommends TouchDown by NitroDesk, though alternates do exist. Also, if you were looking for a camera, you may have to go with the iPad 2 because this tablet doesn’t come with one.

So…now that you know what using an iPad 2 or kindle fire would be like seven days a week, which one would you go with? Please share below. Also make sure to check out recaps of Round 1, Round 2, and the final round.