Although mobility should be fully embraced, companies should not forget the security implications that come with the convenience, says Alexander Forbes IT security and compliance officer Dion Fowles.
Fowles says one of the greatest benefits of mobility is increased productivity and flexibility. With mobility, a sales consultant can take a laptop to clients and staff can work from home and report back electronically.
"The anatomy of mobility is simple, it is a bone that fits into the rest of your network and this bone needs to integrate smoothly," he says.
Although mobility is everywhere now and should be embraced in SA, Fowles says it is also a security concern that needs to be managed properly.
According to the recent BMI-TechKnowledge Mobility and 3G Report, the growth of laptop adoption is higher than other mobile devices, such as cellphones and PDAs. Laptop use has grown almost 10% in the last year.
The report also shows two of the main concerns for companies not adopting mobile business applications are integration and implementation difficulties (13%) and security not being reliable enough (13%).
"We use a rights management server, and a program that encrypts laptop data," he says. "We are also setting up remote offices and cancelling all our Telkom lines as we find 3G to be cheaper."
From a network perspective, the introduction of 3G and HSDPA, along with PC data cards has enabled a much more acceptable user experience, the report also shows.
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