Mobility management solutions specialist NetMotion Wireless, announced the availability of NetMotion Diagnostics for Mobility, its mobile virtual private network (VPN) solution.
NetMotion Diagnostics is designed to help mobile workers and administrators understand why, when, and where problems occur, and enables mobile workers to resolve connection problems on their own, averting support desk calls.
“User-friendliness is absolutely critical when it comes to encouraging employee security,” Tracy Crowe, director of product management for NetMotion, told eWEEK. “One of the best places to enforce security is with the user, so making it easier and friendly for users to comply and help enforce security is essential. Otherwise, they’ll either avoid use of the technology or work on ways around cumbersome security practices.”
When a mobile worker experiences a connection problem, they click a soft button to run a series of pre-configured tests that troubleshoot potential failure points, including the network adapter, local network connection, GPS, VPN connection, Internet, and availability of servers and applications managed by the corporation or located in the cloud.
The platform provides analysis to pinpoint the root cause of problems such as excessive latency, poor signal quality, unresponsive application servers, VPN connections, GPS and dropped connections. It captures, tracks, and provides actionable reports on devices, network performance and usage.
Diagnostics automatically notifies IT and other business stakeholders of an issue via email or text (SMS). IT staff can also set automated policies to be alerted to and respond to problems before they become widespread. Alerts are fully customizable by recipient, frequency and type. It is also designed to reduce resolution time for more complicated problems by alerting and providing detailed technical information to IT personnel.
“Some of the major mobile security issues facing businesses include secure access to corporate resources whether behind corporate firewalls or hosted in the cloud, especially as users are relying more on third- party or public networks for connectivity back to corporate,” Crowe said.
Crowe noted that endpoint protection, including the protection of corporate data that resides on the device, security awareness and tools to protect against the latest threats are also major issues.
Diagnostics is available as a standalone solution for any mobile deployment as an in-house or cloud deployment.
It works with every type of network connection, including 2G/3G/4G, MiFi, trunk modems, satellite, WiFi, and Ethernet, and supports Windows, iOS and Android platforms.
“Mobile security will quickly surpass traditional desktop security as a primary focus as it is much easier and more commonplace for users to load applications on their smartphones and tablets that businesses may/will not have the ability to verify and approve,” Crowe said. “It will potentially drive many companies to rethink their BYOD policies as it’s easier to enforce restriction on devices and data plans that are 100 percent company approved and sponsored.”