Mobile computing gradually allows us to make the intangible “anytime, anywhere access” mantra a reality. Online social identities allow us to access web sites using existing identities from leading social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter. Mobile computing is blurring the difference between personal and business use. Many companies recognize the importance of personal mobile devices for business use; users can access corporate resources from their mobile devices at their convenience to improve productivity and companies can enable access to corporate resources through native mobile applications to improve user experience.
However, introducing mobile devices in the enterprise presents additional security challenges. Mobile devices need to blend seamlessly into the corporate computing landscape in order to preserve security without disrupting the workflow of the enterprise. Typically, applications running natively on mobile devices need to integrate with the enterprise-wide identity governance and access control infrastructure for security and compliance reasons.
Avancer addresses abovementioned challenges by implementing mobile access management solutions by leading vendors like Oracle, IBM, NetIQ, and etc. Integrating enterprise-wide, end-to-end Mobile Access Management solution extends advanced functionalities like mobile and social components, web single sign-on, strong authentication, device fingerprinting, REST and SOAP security, and device-context-aware authorization. Moreover, solutions by leading vendors like Oracle’s Mobile and Social service are secure, server-based intermediaries that link mobile device applications, users, and the enterprise’s back-end identity and access management infrastructure.
Mobile Access Management plays a vital role in providing communication services as it provides the following services;
- Single sign-on across native and web-browser-based mobile applications allows a user to run multiple mobile applications on the same device without having to provide credentials for each application
- Device registration
- Device context data collection (used across a single transaction for fraud detection and fine-grained authorization)
- Mobile user profile services (for direct access to user directories)
- The ability to expose existing corporate systems to mobile devices and the Cloud through REST-based APIs without making changes to the organization’s existing backend systems
- Mobile client development kits to weave security into mobile applications installed on wireless devices.
However, since this technology is still very new, within enterprises, there should be proper co-ordination between the asset management team that ensures the issuance of mobile phones, tablet PC’s, etc and the Identity and Mobile Access Management team that does provisioning and de-provisioning of access to make sure there is a convergence of process for these activities and vice versa. Also, mobile application developers that seek to incorporate mobile client services into enterprise application environments must understand that authentication and authorization requirements may be different from organization to organization and security setup needs to be adjusted accordingly.
Summary
Mobile Access Management solutions enable companies to grab the ever-increasing opportunities that the use of mobile devices in work environment has created. However, in order to secure important enterprise data, it is necessary for companies to employ stringent access controls across all platforms and foster growth through improved anytime anywhere communication.
