And yes by Hillary I am referring to the Secretary of State, Senator and former First Lady and probably the next President of the USA.
For those who don’t know below is a brief summary of what happened:
Hillary Clinton used her personal email account which didn’t encrypt messages during the first two months of use, which would have left emails sent and received by Clinton in early 2009 vulnerable, just when British and American intelligence agencies were reportedly spying on world leaders. In her defense she said “I opted for convenience to use my personal email account, which was allowed. “I thought it would be easier to carry just one device for my work and for my personal emails instead of two.”
This immediately raises the degree of reluctance we face from employees to world leaders when it comes to carrying half-baked enterprise devices which don’t solve their personal communication needs.
A popular initiative called BYOD or “Bring Your Own Device” has been implemented to give them the best of both the worlds.
An enterprise ready device is Your Smartphone + Layers of encryption and security = Superphone.
Jokes apart, let’s run through certain basic measures which keep a check on data theft.
- Identity Management (IDM)
This is used to make sure that only you have the right access to your device and this is much more than just a password. IDM defines the rules for accessing data and can dynamically secure and wipe your device in case of a theft to secure your data. - Geofencing
Geofencing as the name suggests assigns virtual boundaries to your data hence not allowing crucial data to be accessed in conflicting countries or unsafe hotspots as a popular example. - Data Encryption
This is the most standard way of securing data and has been in use since the past century in different ways. Due to the advancement in technology the encryption has gone up from the standard 256 bit to a more secure 2048 bit making it almost impossible to crack. - Device Security
Many times the threat is not external but internal as well. Device stores especially the Android ecosystem is being flood with malicious software and crypto currency apps which constantly data mine your phone for information. Using anti-malware tools for this purpose takes security to a whole new level.
The key question is how could real world use cases be implemented. Well, we already use so many of these features without even noticing.
Eg.1: Did you find your mail giving you a prompt saying “ You have signed in from an unknown location so please verify yourself”. This is a classic example of security features set up by IT admins to keep a check on data breach.
Eg.2: Did you notice that many a times you have only read access to a lot of files and you cannot share them as well. This phenomenon is called “Access management” which allows only the assigned user to have the authority to modify documents. IT Admins are using this to stop corrupted data from flowing into the system.
These and many examples exhibit how modern IT Admins are cleverly using policies like IDM(Identity access management), SSO(single sign on), Access management to make your work data accessible anywhere securely.
The good news is that all these policies can be installed on your personal smartphone making it invincible to thefts. Seems like you can now flaunt your latest bling at office and not be sorry for doing so.
Good Luck!
