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Protecting the Mobile Workforce

Seven ways to safeguard your company's roaming data from thieves, hackers, viruses and just plain stupidity

By Stacy Collett

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5. Educate employees and "put money where your mobile is"

Have a written policyâ¬not a 30-page document, but something more like a seven-point plan, Gold says. Employees should learn to treat all data as a corporate asset.At some companies, talk was indeed cheap, so they've added a monetary punch to their written mobile policy. Some large companies have included provisions within their employee agreement that tie a percentage of an employee's bonus or raise to any security incidents that may have involved them, such as the loss of a laptop, PDA, cell phone or flash drive. "Slowly, people are realizing that this is the only way they're going to be successful. "If there is no 'me factor,' then nobody's going to do it," Luallen says.IT and security managers may also want to define a policy for using an employee's own mobile device at work. "Some companies have policies where you're only going to be able to use the device that they provide" so they can control access and security features, Sudan says. Other companies let employees use their own mobile devices, "but you have to bring it in, let them know that you're using it and certify it" with the security features including antivirus, firewalls, authentication and encryption.

6. Don't forget mobile device etiquette

About 72 percent of Americans say that the worst cell phone habit is having loud conversations in public, according to a national poll by market research group Synovate in Chicago. Not only is it annoying, it's potentially dangerous if the subject is business. You never know where the competition lurks—on a commuter train, on an airplane, at the next table at a restaurant, in the next bathroom stall. Likewise, employees need an occasional reminder that anyone sitting nearby in a coffee shop or on an airplane may have a view of sensitive data, trade secrets or other intellectual property on an injudiciously placed laptop screen.

7. Find a product that balances security with usability

Choose processes in which security is going on in the background and users don't have to worry about it.

"If your employees have to enter a password every time they have to make a phone call, or if their device has to be unlocked after every 30 seconds, that's going to drive them to not want to use the mobile device," Sudan says. "You want your employees to get the productivity gains that you've invested in."

Industry watchers say that a proactive stance will help companies rebound quickly when mobile devices are inevitably infected, breached, lost or stolen."