Is it simple? No. But containerization is a critical approach to BYOD security. For a short and very enjoyable history lesson, watch this Youtube video. It’s the story to a 1930s-era truck driver named Malcom McLean, who tired of sitting in the shipping port for days, waiting for dock workers to unload bales of cotton from his truck. This delay cost him money. McLean had the idea of simply hoisting the entire truckload onto the ship in one fell swoop. This insight ultimately lead to the modern “containerized” approach to shipping. Pick up the whole container and plop it on the ship! Simple, yes? Well, no. It took another couple of decades before McLean actually implemented his idea. He had to design the container itself, which was different from a conventional truck trailer of the day. And he had to build an entire ship with a stronger deck to bear the load of stacked metal containers. Because of difficulties of this sort, a lot of people thought McLean’s idea was crazy. [Also see With BYOD, data breaches just waiting to happen]As part of our CSO Perspectives series of one-day events, we recently convened a panel of CISOs in Boston to talk about securing mobile computing. One of our esteemed panelists said his company, to deal with the demands of bring-your-own-device (BYOD) movement, is taking the containerization approach. The smartphone or tablet is regarded, for security purposes, as untrusted. Users can do more or less as they like—they own the devices, after all—but corporate apps and data and network access are isolated from whatever else is on the phone or tablet. Containerized. Simple, yes? I asked the panelist about how off-the-shelf his containerization strategy was. “Not very,” was the reply. And indeed, as in McLean’s day, the simplicity of the idea conceals a lot of technical concerns. Controls can be implemented at the OS level, the hypervisor level, the application level& (For more about different approaches to containerization—without too much head-spinning technical detail—check out this useful blog post from Fixmo: http://fixmo.com/blog/2012/05/11/mobile-device-sandboxing-101.) For all the challenges and decisions, though, containerization still looks like a mission-critical concept for the mobile and BYOD era. Related content news Multibillion-dollar cybersecurity training market fails to fix the supply-demand imbalance Despite money pouring into programs around the world, training organizations have not managed to ensure employment for professionals, while entry-level professionals are finding it hard to land a job By Samira Sarraf Oct 02, 2023 6 mins CSO and CISO CSO and CISO CSO and CISO news Royal family’s website suffers Russia-linked cyberattack Pro-Russian hacker group KillNet took responsibility for the attack days after King Charles condemned the invasion of Ukraine. By Michael Hill Oct 02, 2023 2 mins DDoS Cyberattacks feature 10 things you should know about navigating the dark web A lot can be found in the shadows of the internet from sensitive stolen data to attack tools for sale, the dark web is a trove of risks for enterprises. Here are a few things to know and navigate safely. By Rosalyn Page Oct 02, 2023 13 mins Cybercrime Security news ShadowSyndicate Cybercrime gang has used 7 ransomware families over the past year Researchers from Group-IB believe it's likely the group is an independent affiliate working for multiple ransomware-as-a-service operations By Lucian Constantin Oct 02, 2023 4 mins Hacker Groups Ransomware Cybercrime Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe