There is no denying that enterprise mobility has been one of the most challenging trends for businesses and others when it comes to security throughout the past several years. Studies indicate that decision-makers have largely struggled to strike the right chord when writing policies, enforcing the protocols and ensuring seamless protection of data traveling into and out of mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets and portable computers.

When enterprise mobility first became a core business strategy, studies indicated that the majority of companies were not quite striking the right chord with respect to comprehensive management of devices, users, applications and backend systems. Because this was one of the first hints at what has become the major trend of consumerized IT, it made sense that the average firm was struggling to get the policy and management angles into the right positions. 

One of the main themes in the IT security community throughout the past five years has been the threat that mobile devices and applications present to business data and systems. At first, reports found that companies were far behind the eight ball, not putting nearly enough time, energy or budget into the development of strong mobility security strategies, procurement of the right monitoring tools and otherwise, but this then became a bit brighter as time went on. 

The Internet of Things has become one of the more widely discussed trends among corporate executives and public sector officials, as the movement toward devices that generate data and have more functionality appears to be unstoppable. There is no denying that the IoT will have a positive impact on economies around the globe, all the while fueling a new era of analytics and intelligence given the much wider variety of data-generating resources. 

The Internet of Things has become one of the more widely discussed trends among corporate executives and public sector officials, as the movement toward devices that generate data and have more functionality appears to be unstoppable. There is no denying that the IoT will have a positive impact on economies around the globe, all the while fueling a new era of analytics and intelligence given the much wider variety of data-generating resources. 

As data breaches continue to rise in both frequency and subsequent damage, the private and public sectors have appeared to become a bit more aggressive in their pursuits of stronger information governance and IT security. Although there are a breadth of protections that need to be implemented to reduce the risk of a highly devastating information loss and exposure event, mobility security seems to be among the most important today. 

With more operations and processes taking place through smartphones, tablets and portable computers each year, the demands of enterprise mobility security and management have increased substantially in a relatively short period of time. No longer are businesses capable of allowing employees to use these devices for work functions without having strong and well-informed policies in place, as the threat of breaches and productivity declines are substantial. 

Enterprise mobility management has been one of the more complex and challenging aspects of corporate strategic oversight throughout the past several years, while experts have urged decision-makers to take these responsibilities a bit more seriously. Although many firms have started to strike the right chord with mobile device management, few have comprehensively nailed down policies that lead to stronger control over applications and other components of this revolutionary trend. 

The past 12 months have been filled with significant data breaches, compromised networks and myriad other security breaches, many of which have been fueled by the rapid deployment of new technologies. Looking toward 2015, there is no doubt that organizations in the public and private sectors will continue to be challenged by hackers and other threats with accelerating frequency.

This is the second segment of our 12 Days of Security series.