Study: CIOs prioritizing personal mobile device management, security

Aug 16, 2010 3:29 PM

“Managing and Securing Corporate and Personal Mobile Devices in Financial Services,” a commissioned technology adoption profileconducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf ofFiberlink Communications was released today with findings from financial services IT leaders on the top security priorities for personal mobile devices. With more than half of financial services enterprises already supporting personally owned mobile devices, a significant challenge has been introduced to most firms’ existing mobile policies and IT operations.

For 49% of the respondents, ensuring regulatory compliance is the top IT security priority. IT professionals within firms governed by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) must ensure that smartphones are in compliance with their firm’s broader privileged information requirements. When asked which industry regulations are driving concerns regarding mobile devices, 41% indicated FINRA compliance and, the same%age reported that Sarbanes–Oxley compliance is a concern.

More than a third of the IT professionals indicated that their enterprise supports multiple mobile operating systems (OSs), with ten% supporting four or more. In an effort to avoid getting spread too thin, IT often provides minimal support for these OSs, introducing vulnerabilities and threats.

The study indicates that tackling these challenges requires that IT and telecom managers invest in a mobility service that delivers on key functionality. Eighty-six percent of respondents have already deployed a strong password policy. Other popularly deployed strategies include: full disk encryption (71%), remote lock/wipe (64%) and asset and activity visibility and management (66%) across all types of mobile devices. Over the next two years, 43% of enterprises surveyed plan to deploy Over-the-air (OTA) configuration management.

“Managing and Securing Corporate and Personal Mobile Devices in Financial Services” can be downloaded here.