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MobileIron introduced the Content Security Service (CSS), which separates security controls from data storage methods and allows security to be managed at the document-level across multiple content repositories.
The platform allows employees to securely use their own cloud services without locking employees or IT into specific content repositories. Using the new platform, documents do not have to be migrated to a new repository and are secure even when stored in a personal cloud service.
In addition, CSS enables the encryption of work documents when they are stored in the personal cloud, allowing the enterprise to set policies that prevent unauthorized use.
“Content is the lifeblood of the enterprise. Work revolves around information and each employee needs access to business documents to get their work done, Ojas Rege, vice president of strategy at MobileIron,” told eWEEK. “But as tech savvy consumers, many employees often prefer to use personal tools for work, unintentionally putting corporate data at risk.”
The platform is designed to provide visibility into the status of documents, including when they were accessed, who accessed them, and using what device, and also tracks policy enforcement actions.
Employees can use the native sharing features of their personal cloud apps to share the documents secured by CSS with other authorized employees. These documents are encrypted even when shared so that only an authorized user on an authorized device will be able to decrypt them, the company said.
“User experience is the litmus test for mobile adoption in the enterprise,” Rege said. “CSS was designed to make it simple for IT professionals to create and manage document-level security policies and for end users to access and share those documents.”
CSS also lets IT departments set document expiration policies and selectively wipe specific documents on a device, and allows control of the uploading, downloading, editing, and sharing of those documents.
For example, if a pricelist must be updated every 30 days, CSS is designed to ensure that the expired document is automatically wiped from the device, which is then updated with the new one.
CSS integrates with the company’s EMM platform to maintain a consistent view of users, groups, and devices across the organization. It also integrates with the MobileIron Docs@Work app on iOS and Android to enforce content security policies on the device.
“Mobility is the catalyst for IT to rethink security. Mobile moves fast, at consumer speed, so security frameworks need to be iterative,” Rege said. Enterprise data is now on personal devices and so IT teams have to be experts on both security and privacy.” Rege noted that mobile is tightly connected to the cloud and is actually becoming the main consumption vehicle for cloud services. As a result, security architectures have to protect not just the data center but the broader information fabric of on-premise, business cloud, and personal cloud services.
“The security model itself must be responsible, not restrictive,” Rege said. “Security through lockdown simply creates an expanding internal ecosystem of shadow IT. Most security professionals have grown up in a world where restricting user activities was a key means to the end of protecting company data. Now they have to shift their mindset to view security as a way to broaden employee choice.”