Mobile apps are transforming business. App developers must deliver great apps quickly, but many of the apps they build will include sensitive data and run on employee-owned devices. Business and personal data must be separated through containerization, and Mobile IT has to protect the business data while preserving the user experience. An enterprise app persona includes all the business apps and data on a mobile device. It is tied to a specific user, based on that user's identity, and it is managed and secured through policy without touching personal data.
Challenge
Prevent data loss as mobile apps become business-critical and widely adopted
Solution
A secure enterprise app persona using MobileIron AppConnect and MobileIron AppTunnel
Benefits
App security must be invisible to the end user and easy for the app developer and Mobile IT. A complete approach to securing the enterprise app persona includes the abilities to:
- Protect app data-at-rest without touching personal data
- Protect app data-in-motion
- Protect privacy thru data separation, especially in BYOD settings
- Configure apps silently and update policies dynamically without user action
- Support both SDK and wrapping methods for app containerization
- Support both iOS and Android
- Support both internal and 3rd party apps
MobileIron AppConnect
MobileIron AppConnect containerizes apps to protect data-at-rest without touching personal data. Each app becomes a secure container whose data is encrypted, protected from unauthorized access, and removable. Because each user has multiple business apps, each app container is also connected to other secure app containers. This allows the sharing of policies, like app single sign-on, and the sharing of data, like documents. All app containers are connected to MobileIron for policy management. AppConnect can be ordered for Android and iOS.
MobileIron AppTunnel
MobileIron AppTunnel provides secure tunneling and access control to protect app data-in-motion. Fine-grained app-by-app session security protects the connection of each app container to the corporate network. It builds upon the proven MobileIron Sentry technology, which is installed at thousands of customers. MobileIron also supports 3rd party VPN, but AppTunnel is particularly useful in BYOD settings where organizations may not want to open up VPN access to all apps on the device. AppTunnel can be ordered for iOS, with Android planned for a future release.
Protecting Employee Privacy
The value of the enterprise app persona to the employee is that it protects privacy. Privacy is a top concern in mobile deployments because most employees use their mobile devices for both personal and business purposes, regardless of who owns the device. They want to do their work while mobile, but they don’t want to put their personal data at risk. Employee adoption of mobile initiatives depends on the credible and clear separation of business app data into an enterprise app persona that can be managed separately by the Mobile IT team. MobileIron AppConnect containers prevent all unauthorized access to business data, so IT only has to manage the container and does not need any visibility into the rest of the data on the device. This preserves user privacy, drives user adoption, and protects the organization.