Top mobility challenges facing C-level executives

Mre than fifty percent of the companies surveyed are now planning Mobile Productivity projects to allow employees to access, sync and share documents using mobile devices, according to Copiun.

The survey also reveals that the biggest challenges facing C-level executives and IT decision-makers in mobility are data security and compliance management.

An undercurrent discovered among survey participants is that there is a very real tension between corporate IT departments and mobile workers. For legal and regulatory reasons, IT leaders state a strong need to maintain control and governance over data, mobile devices and the network itself. They say their biggest challenge is doing so without interfering with employee productivity.

Mobile employees, on the other hand, revealed a growing reliance on sharing documents with tablets and smart phones, regardless of IT policies against doing so. Having the most up-to-date information at their fingertips across multiple devices trumped the restrictive practices put in place by IT departments.

Without a proper “Bring Your Own (BYO) policy” and tools in place, employees will ultimately create their own solutions or “workarounds” by default, unwittingly putting the enterprise at risk for a myriad of security threats, including: data leakage, non-compliance, version conflicts and former employees who depart with sensitive corporate information.

Unfortunately, passwords can be figured out and even the most secure mobile devices can be rooted or hacked. Moreover, certain network security measures can interfere with employees’ mobility and VPN’s can serve as an easy entry point for malware and hackers into the corporate network.

Key findings from the survey:

• More than 50% of companies are planning a mobile collaboration project that will allow employees to access, sync and share documents.
• 75% of companies indicated that they WOULD NOT knowingly allow employees to use whatever they want and bring their own cloud into the workplace.
• Maintaining data ownership, security and governance is the most important criteria for companies in allowing document access to their employees.
• Data security and compliance management are the biggest mobile device challenges companies are facing today.
• All departments across the enterprise will benefit from mobile document access, not just sales and services.