How is your mobile compliance?

Mobility in its greater context – namely, enabling employees to work from any location – is becoming more common as a means of increasing organizational flexibility, reducing operating expenses, reducing taxes and improving customer service. Mobile messaging is a key component of this trend by enabling properly equipped workers to send and receive email, access the Web and Web 2.0 applications, use corporate applications and communicate in a variety of ways regardless of where they work.

Although mobile messaging carries with it the promise of significantly enhanced employee productivity, faster decision making and greater overall efficiency for organizations of all sizes, it also carries with it a number of quite serious risks. Among these risks are:

• Loss of sensitive or confidential data - In a survey of mid-sized and large organizations conducted by Osterman Research in 2009, the most serious problem faced by organizations in the context of their mobile messaging use is the loss of corporate data in the event a device is physically lost.
• An inability to archive mobile content - Another survey conducted by Osterman Research during 2009 found that 20% of corporate data in mid-sized and large organizations is contained on mobile devices of various types. However, few organizations have a way of archiving this content.
• An inability to monitor communications sent via mobile devices - Organizations must be able to monitor communications to detect policy or legal obligations.
• Violation of compliance obligations - There are a growing number of obligations with which virtually every organization must comply. These obligations, which are focused primarily on the archiving, encryption and monitoring of certain types of communications, are increasing in number worldwide.

In short, organizations face a variety of risks from their inability to properly manage, secure and archive the use of mobile devices in their organizations.

The answer, then, is to deploy a capability that will permit mobile devices to be used as freely as possible by as many people in an organization as necessary, while at the same time allowing IT to manage these devices and the content that users send and receive with them.

We have just published an executive brief on this topic that you can download at http://www.ostermanresearch.com/whitepapers/download102.htm.