With bring your own device (BYOD) here to stay, South African enterprises are taking steps to address the security risks and device management complexity presented by a wide variety of devices and operating systems, says Paulo Ferreira, Director of Enterprise Mobility at Samsung Electronics South Africa.
Ferreira says, "roughly 31% of all mobile device sales in South Africa last year were either corporate liable (10%) or BYOD (21%) devices: meaning that at least 30% of all mobile devices being sold in South Africa today are being used for corporate purposes".
Android is the dominant operating system, accounting for around half of all mobile phones and tablets currently sold in the country. However enterprises must also accommodate iOS, Windows and BlackBerry devices in the BYOD environment.
"The Utopian ideal for IT would be a single operating system across all desktops and mobile devices. But employees have voted for a broad range of brands and operating systems and these must be provided for in the enterprise. Corporates at the very least, must support Android and iOS."
Securing the hardware and the data on the device, fortifying sensitive data in transit and ensuring effective policy-based management of mobile devices are just some the challenges now facing IT.
"The mobile device is really just a small, powerful computer with phone capabilities and should be treated in the same way as desktops and laptops when it comes to policy-based management," continues Ferreira.
"On hardware and platform security, manufacturers of Android and iOS devices in particular have gone to great lengths to ensure their hardware and operating systems are secure," says Ferreira. "Google do a good job of building security features into Android but it's up to the OEMs to go a step further. Samsung has strengthened the security of its devices and the operating system by unveiling KNOX two years ago. Samsung KNOX enhances the security on both the hardware and the software levels of the device."
"Due to Android's rapid rise in popularity among consumers, we needed to ensure the security of our devices was extremely tight. Thanks to Samsung KNOX, customers now tell us 'we're ok with Android, as long as it's Samsung's version of Android'. We were first to market with a security solution like this and we are continually enhancing it," says Ferreira.
Samsung KNOX offers enterprises the ability to manage over 600 policies, compared with under 40 on native Android, as well as the ability to 'containerise' and separately manage business and personal components of a BYOD device using KNOX Workspace. Samsung KNOX also supports user authentication and authorisation, VPN and over-the-air encryption, remote find, hard drive encryption and URL and content filtering.
In addition to device security, companies are looking to manage the proliferation of devices and operating systems on the corporate network. Ferreira says many are still looking to migrate from older management systems to solutions that accommodate other platforms.
"Some manufacturers have extended their management tools, so enterprises can onboard a wider range of devices and operating systems. There is also a wealth of mature Enterprise Mobility Management solutions available on the market today to allow enterprises to manage the heterogeneous mobile environment."
With Samsung, enterprises have peace of mind with the leading solutions that ensure devices are secure across all levels, as well as being compatible with all mobile device management suites, concludes Ferreira. "We offer a comprehensive solution for South African business with cutting-edge mobile devices and enterprise solutions".
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