MobileIron Announces Content Security Service
MobileIron describes itself as a leader in enterprise mobility management. With MobileIron’s Content Security Service, employees are given the flexibility to save documents from their organization into their favorite personal cloud service.
At first glance, this claim could collectively give your organization’s security team a panic attack. When you look under the hood at how MobileIron’s new solution works, your security team will likely calm down, take a few deep breathes and applaud the innovation of MobileIron’s patented Content Security Service.
How Does MobileIron’s Content Security Service Work?
MobileIron’s CSS was built on the premise that some employees may utilize personal cloud services to perform day to day work tasks even if business has expressly forbidden the practice. In fact, Chris Hazelton from 451 Research mentions “Employees often bypass restrictive IT policies to use their preferred consumer apps for work, unintentionally putting corporate data at risk.”
MobileIron works by securing the file at the document level, not the infrastructure level. Using MobileIron’s Content Security Service, employees can use and store corporate files within their personal cloud without having to worry about leaking corporate data. MobileIron seems to have several patents filed regarding its “Secure Virtual File Management System.” US Patents 8,863,297, 8,863,298, and 8,863,299 belong to MobileIron and each patent helps users lock down their documents so that they can be stored within personal cloud services.
5 Ways MobileIron Enables Bring Your Own Cloud within Enterprises
There are 5 main components to the MobileIron Content Security Service. MobileIron claims that these 5 components will keep your documents safe and secure regardless of where they are stored. These 5 components consist of:
Audit Trails for Documents: With CSS, enterprises can see which documents were shared, when they were shared and by whom they were shared. CSS even tells you which devices the document has been displayed upon.
Secure Sharing Capabilities: End users can share documents using their personal cloud services. The catch? Users who aren’t a member of your organization are unable to decrypt the documents, should they improperly gain access to the user’s personal cloud storage account.
Data Loss Prevention: Administrators can institute DLP controls that allow for documents to expire after a certain date. If you have a monthly sheet that needs to be updated, an admin can ensure that the previous months document is inaccessible or becomes archived as the document should no longer be needed as you move onto the next month.
Encryption and Key Management: Encryption is a key part of MobileIron’s offering. MobileIron has a unique method of distributing and managing encryption keys. Without the key, a hacker would see nothing but garbled text when trying to lift data from corporate docs.
MobileIron’s EMM: The MobileIron EMM platform fully integrates with the CSS suite. EMM gives you a granular view of your organization’s document security process. Within this console, you can make administrative changes that impact the way documents are shared, viewed and handled within your organization.
