With employees increasingly using a wide range of mobile devices, enterprises increasingly worry that security isn’t keeping up with desktop standards.
Cloud mobile management provider MobileIron has just released new capabilities for its platform to help security managers who subscribe to its service control risk.
The first is called Help@Work, which gives IT help desks the ability to do remote trouble shooting for users of iOS devices as they would for desktop computers. Sean Convery, vice-president of products at MobileIron, said the goal is to give tech support control of the device without accessing user privacy. In effect, the user is in control of the device to prevent unwanted access to private data.
The user launches the Help@Work app (which can have a customer logo) that opens a support ticket. Support staff then then requests screen sharing, which the user has to agree to, for the session to start. During the session the user can explain the problem, while making sure anything unneeded isn’t shown. Convery said the app works over cellular or Wi-Fi networks, and there’s no performance hit. At the moment it’s only available for iOS. Convery said that Android customers are interested.
The company also said that it now integrates MobileIron data with Splunk Inc.’s enterprise and cloud network data intelligence analysis platforms. Splunk pulls in log and other data from any IT system; now it can digest some 200 fields of data from MobileIron.
Organizations can use the capability to better understand what mobile users are doing with their devices domestically and when roaming, Convery said, or track the status of mobile operating systems.
Splunk administrators have to change a configuration to access the MobileIron data. MobileIron has built a visualization tool so administrators can see the data flows.
These enhancements go along with an capability added earlier this month called Tunnel, which enables administrators to set up a per-applications virtual private network (VPN) for users Apple devices running iOS 7. Unapproved and personal apps are blocked. It uses the operating system’s single sign on capability to make the VPN inobtrusive.
An organization could allow users to deploy Office for iPad, Convery said, and with Tunnel give access to Sharepoint resources behind the firewall. MobileIron already offers a VPN for Android devices, although it works in a different way. Tunnel for iOS 7 “dramatically increase your ability to take advantage of all manner of productivity applications on the application but in more of a work context.”
Tunnel and Help@Work are only available to MobileIron subscribers paying for the Platinum Bundle.