Category: Mobile

Michael Gagnon

Who has not heard that “Knowledge is Power” in today’s technology connected economy? Knowing what to know is important but knowing what you don’t know is even more critical to execution. With so much information flowing in today’s marketplaces, how is information: and in particular, mobile information, made actionable on your employees favorite mobile device?

The ability for business to disrupt & win is directly related to the quality of relationships between an Enterprise & its customers, its employees, its partner/supplier ecosystem. Nurturing these relationships with free flowing, frictionless & ultimately secure mobile data is at the core of increasing the ecosystem effectiveness. Matching “Know How” with “Know Who” across the enterprise ecosystem is one of the incredible opportunities that data and mobility can harvest.

Technological innovation is so often cited as the fuel of disruption & transformation in the Enterprise. The reality is the more subtle. Intricate shifts in the relationship structures between customers, employees and partners/suppliers are what make the end game of ecosystem transformation possible. And secure mobility is a key catalyst.

But how do you get the information your customers, employees, partners/suppliers need need; when they need it and where they need it, in a simple, consumable and action oriented form on their favorite mobile device?

Bottom line is that knowledge is truly powerless unless and until it flows freely, transparently & with complete security to mobile users…. at point of need. Your ecosystem wants to execute work jobs where they can best happen and this is generally not at a desk as we are so often told by our customers.

Big Data systems are a great example of this conundrum. Big Data systems drive real time analytical capabilities provide a treasure trove of highly contextual, relevant information; derived from some of the most sensitive & proprietary subsets of data in the Enterprise. Big Data is at the core of new competitive capabilities in the Enterprise but does it suffer from mobile security bottlenecks as it tries to deliver insight from Hadoop Clusters to mobile devices?

How you get this information from your Hadoop Data Lake to your mobile device simply, securely & at scale, so users across your entire ecosystem can interact with complete trust and integrity? All of the work to create the situational context that is Big Data is worthless if it cannot be delivered in a totally transparent but totally simplified & secure manner to customers, employees partners & suppliers.

How to enable simplified, “intelligence grade” security at scale is the problem to the answer. Big Data systems need to fulfill their promise to mobile users in the same way they do for those same users fixed devices like PC’s. Could it be that traditional approaches to mobile security found in EMM systems now create too much complexity, cost & friction for the dynamic world of real time Big Data systems?

What if the networks that connect Big Data systems to mobile devices were inherently “intelligence grade” in terms of security transmission, delivery & data protection?

NUBO’s Virtual Mobile Infrastructure (VMI), provides a next generation approach to providing free flowing, transparent & secure delivery of information from Big Data & Cloud Systems to iOS & Android devices. Nubo VMI runs virtual Android mobile devices in a secure AWS Cloud or Premise based platform. Mobile apps are delivered via Nubo’s intelligent remote display protocol called UX over IP to customers, employees, partners/suppliers mobile devices.

The contribution that UX over IP makes to Enterprise security & ecosystem productivity is that Nubo VMI requires “zero data” in transit or on the device to operate ecosystem mobile apps normally. Mobile threat perimeters are reduced to zero with no compromise in user interaction & experience with mobile applications like Outlook & Office 365. With Nubo VMI there is simply no data to hack because there is no data on the mobile device to be hacked. You cannot steal what you cannot see.

Mobile app developers can radically reduce investments into the myriad of traditional mobile app security practices such as app vulnerability testing, mobile device compatibility testing, OS vulnerability testing & app wrapping to name just three. Nubo VMI will reduce mobile app development life cycles by 50% while reducing app development costs by 65% while increasing mobile app security to “intelligence grade”.

Nubo VMI is a platform that delivers radically simplified enablement of mobile apps for customers, employees, partners & suppliers across the Enterprise ecosystem. Using Nubo VMI, the right information is delivered to the right person at the right time where the work actually gets done. Enterprises can be incredibly flexible in the specific situational information that is delivered to users in their ecosystem without the traditional concerns, costs & complexities that are mobile app development as we know it today.

Relationships in the ecosystem will be enriched and empowered because of the incredible relevancy of information that can now be more safely delivered to mobile devices. Nubo VMI helps drive better customer experience ideation, ecosystem collaboration while taking cost, complexity and delays out of traditional mobile application dev-ops.

Winning in today’s market, demands that mobile ecosystem players be on the same page and at the same table with the right information for each and every user to leverage appropriately.

Israel Lifshitz

For many people “iOS updates” sounds exciting because it usually brings cool new features to mobile users. However, for IT professionals, who are responsible for the enterprise app portfolio, this may even cause some sense of nervousness.

Why is that so? Let’s imagine you are responsible for 50 mobile apps in your organization. With each mobile OS update, many of the apps need to be updated in order for you to be able to continue working regularly on the updated devices. The amount of effort that each organization needs to make to ensure this kind of compatibility is huge.

Even if your organization is willing to make this effort for each update, still it’s a very difficult project to coordinate among several teams, external app suppliers, as well as complete it all on a very tight schedule before each update.

Blocking OS Updates

Many IT guys just think that preventing your users from performing updates is the right solution to take. However, this is not a good solution because firstly, you are going against your users – they want to update to maximize their device usage. You are also interested in updated devices, because it usually solves security issues.

Secondly, this action is also very difficult to implement, merely because there are no simple ways to block iOS updates. You will probably not even be able do that to managed devices, using MDM software.

The few solutions that currently exist to block updates are kind of hacks. For example, blocking specific addresses and port on the firewall or installing some unnecessary configuration profiles.

Other companies just ask their users to delay the upgrade until they ensure that all apps are ready. This is the most common solution today, but many users just don’t follow this, especially if this is their personal device.

The Virtualization Approach

Luckily, now there is a solution that can help you support future versions with no effort at all. With Mobile App Virtualization, the apps are running in the datacenter and the users are accessing them with a thin client app. We make sure we test and update this thin client with any new OS version, long before your users need to perform any updates.

The apps themselves are running all in one OS version in the server and don’t need to be updated, according to the users or vendors desires. You have the full control when to update the virtual environment version and you also have ample time to plan such upgrade way in advance. App virtualization also has additional benefits such as the ability to enhance security, reduce development time and also provide support for un-managed devices.

Bottom line: Do not be a slave to OS updates – check out how virtualization can make your work simpler, improve the uptime of your apps and most importantly – make your users happier.

David Abbou

Confidence: It’s rather amazing what you can accomplish in both your personal and business life when you have it. And it’s equally frustrating how you can hold yourself back from progress when you don’t. The influence of confidence and security on mindset and, ultimately, performance can’t be understated.

In team sports, for example, great defense is a major driver of confidence. With the NHL and NBA Finals kicking off this week you’ll doubtless hear an age-old sports quote: “Offense sells tickets, but defense wins championships,” and it’s definitely a quote that has stood up to the test of time. A disciplined and consistent defense gives a team the faith to go on the attack more freely and score the points they need to win the game. “D-E-F-E-N-S-E!”, as we like to chant at the game is security, and security breeds confidence.

This is also true in the business world, and one of the main factors currently playing out in the way businesses are handling digital transformation. In the enterprise mobility world, confidence and security are fundamental to the strategy CIOs and CISOs pursue in maximizing the competitive value of mobilizing workflows. There’s also the flip side to that scenario. Just how mobile corporate business processes are enabled is equally influenced by the barriers that security fears instill.

Ideally, you’d like to remove as many restrictions from mobile employees and teleworkers as possible; give them access to the most popular and in-demand apps, and ultimately to the rich level of data that provides actionable insight, enhances productivity, yields value and generates revenue. But the plethora of consumer devices owned by your employees do not make for a safe playground for business data to be in.

  • Securing Data on Devices Means You’re Playing Not to Lose

Malware, OS vulnerabilities and malicious apps litter mobile endpoints and threaten to steal data and jeopardize compliance. That doesn’t include the insider threats from disgruntled employees or lost and stolen devices. Hackers realizing the value that can be gleaned from financial, healthcare, legal and payment data aren’t playing by the rulebook in their goal to acquire lucrative assets. With such critical data laying in enemy territory, it’s no wonder BYOD programs have barely scratched their potential until now.

So how have enterprises come to grips with these security risks? Not very confidently. If you look at the way mobile device management (MDM) policies have played out for everyone involved, we’re hardly talking about a winning combination. Enforcing rigid security policies, locks, and data wipe policies on personally-owned smartphones is hurting BYOD adoption and compliance, not helping it. Employees turn to preferred solutions – permitted or not – just so they can do the work that MDM software was supposed to facilitate. “Secure Containers”, the foundation on which MDM security is built, have been exposed numerous times for their insufficient ability to thwart sophisticated decryption techniques.

How much more secure then, is app-level security? Mobile application management (MAM) and enterprise mobility management (EMM) vendors claim to be the nuanced solution to the mobile app security question. But app wrapping applications are still installed on the employee’s personal device via a MAM agent, inside of a container. While this add an extra layer of security, it doesn’t change the fundamentals: enterprise apps and data still rest on a wide variety of hardware you don’t own and therefore can’t fully control.

  • The Home Court Advantage: Why Location Matters

MDM and MAM approaches don’t go far enough in giving enterprises the confidence to embrace unfettered mobile app deployment because your data still isn’t resting on home territory; your enterprise infrastructure. This forces many to play it safe by settling for less mobility, and sticking to email and calendar apps on BYOD devices. That simply won’t cut it as we head further into the age where smartphones, tablets and wearables are the new PCs. Enterprises suffering from “security insecurity” will be held back in critical business arenas and consequently lose customers and market share. Finding a better way to unlock teleworking is therefore a necessity.

  • Playing to Win with Remote Virtual Devices

Imagine you could move your net, not only off the field, but out of the arena entirely. Not very fair for your opponents is it? By using Virtual Mobile Infrastructure (VMI), you can do just that and leave no trace of data for attackers to exploit. VMI essentially mirrors a virtual mobile device on to your employee devices as a display. One remote platform allows organizations to select any Android app in the market. The sensitive nature of proprietary or client data no longer has to undermine mobility and constrict choice. Your employees can access the best tools for the job within a seamless virtual workspace that doesn’t limit their personal device or infringe on privacy.

That’s the confidence enterprises will need going forward to maximize mobile information with the peace of mind to shine competitively.