IT Briefcase Exclusive Interview: BYOD Planning with an Eye for the Future

with Israel Lifshitz, Founder & CEO, Nubo Software

If you’ve been tracking the evolution of our BYOD work culture, you’ll know that most enterprises are at some stage of getting a grip on a myriad of issues, including employee adoption, compliance, Shadow IT and user privacy just to name a few. We recently spoke with Israel Lifshitz, Founder and CEO of Virtual Mobile Infrastructure (VMI) provider Nubo. In this interview, Israel shares his insights on these issues and how organizations can steer their enterprise mobility in a way that meets both business and security needs.

• Q: BYOD is no longer a new concept for businesses these days, but we can see that many companies are still struggling to integrate their mobility needs with IT infrastructure. Why do you think that is?

A: I think that BYOD as an organizational vision demands looking at the big picture as it relates to your particular business, your employees, and the information and tools they need to compete successfully. Taking a best practices approach for this involves asking the right questions from the start, from all of the right areas within your enterprise. It requires collaboration from all of the stakeholders that are connected to taking work applications and data mobile, not just IT security, finance and human resources. Engaging management and staff to define their BYOD needs, what tools and most importantly what levels of information they need to access remotely. You can no longer accept the scenario that user mobility needs cannot be sufficiently met due to security risks. Not if you want users to actually adopt BYOD and use approved apps.

• Q: If we run down most of the BYOD dilemmas, it sounds like a classic tug-of-war of sorts between IT and staff. Are the two really as diametrically opposed as they at times appear?

A: I think that the perception of this paradoxical relationship between IT and employees has been there for a long time, but that it has been improving and will soon be seen as part of the past. Our work life and culture is evolving in way where most successful business strategies can only come to fruition if there’s a fusion between the vision and the technical problem solving ability to make it a reality. BYOD is an excellent example of how this is happening, and one of the strategies that’s bringing marketing, sales, IT and many other leaders to the same table to discuss solutions.

• Q: So then how can organizations satisfy all of these seemingly disparate audiences – one wanting mobile-first tools without their privacy being risked, while the other must make sure data isn’t being leaked?

A: First you need the different roles in your organization to define what tasks and tools they need most to produce and make timely, valuable decisions. Determining which apps and what level of access is needed by who. And from there looking at what the security implications are for providing this data on mobile devices. This is when you collaborate with IT to discuss how to service these needs while protecting corporate data, but also ensuring you’re not violating employee privacy. Answers to these questions exist but organizations can get to them quicker by asking the right questions from the outset. I think it’s in many ways a challenge of synergy as much as it is a technical one, and that inter-communication between IT and other divisions of the organization hasn’t always been very fluid. The successful organizations recognize this and have acted to change it.

• Q: The recent CipherCloud Report revealed that 86 percent of cloud applications being used are not approved for work use. How do these stats reflect on the success or failure of the current state of BYOD and how can organizations best address it?

A: The best solutions to handling Shadow IT lie in the problems themselves, and they can be handled in this order: 1. User Experience (UX); 2. Privacy; and 3. Education.

If we look at the various ways organizations have attempted to provide work applications on mobile devices, they have really run the spectrum. And now it’s clear that people will only use mobile-first apps that are made to work for the device form factor. We can no longer try to force legacy applications, for example, onto devices run on Android and iOS OSs. The resulting UX is uncomfortable enough to drive people away from enterprise tools and towards easier to use solutions, approved or not. So organizations should realize the long-term value of providing their employees with the native mobile experience they’ve become accustomed to with consumer apps.

The other factor impeding BYOD adoption and contributing to Shadow IT is privacy. Regardless of your security setup, how can you make sure that the privacy of your staff’s personal files and data cannot be compromised? Is this inherently guaranteed in your security process? The more you can show and not tell employees that their personal environment will not be interfered with as a result of using their device for work, the likelier they are to comply with policy and embrace the tools you’ve given them.

And lastly organizations should make sure they take the time to educate and inform their employees on the relevant BYOD policies and the gravity of the risks caused by client and sensitive work data being breached. This is also the right setting to explain your security process and how you manage lost or stolen devices, and all the measures you’ve taken to respect their privacy.

• Q: Until recently, it was relatively standard enterprise mobile apps (i.e. email, calendar and contacts) that were deemed as BYOD essentials. Now, businesses in many sectors are challenged with deploying big data apps, and programs containing a wealth of sensitive information one personally-owned devices. How would you advise organizations to overcome this challenge?

A: The more substantial the data is that you need to provide on mobile devices the more clearer it becomes that the data itself should no longer be stored there. Running your corporate apps, files and folders remotely from your data center and virtualizing them onto devices as a display solves this problem. And this is why you’re beginning to see an emerging technology like Virtual Mobile Infrastructure (VMI) gaining traction. If you can deliver a native look and feel as fast and as reliably as apps stored on the device, and ensure that no digital footprint exists whatsoever, you can confidently deploy sensitive, robust apps for your employees and gain the benefits of this without risking security. You also eliminate the need to remote wipe or disable device features, effectively guaranteeing employee privacy. Keeping your corporate workspace remote yet accessible on employee devices will keep your apps and data secure while increasing employee adoption of BYOD.

Israel Lifshitz, Founder & CEO, Nubo Software

A computer science graduate from Technion Institute of Technology, Israel previously founded worldwide ITSM leader SysAid Technologies. With Nubo,he is now focused on defining the new virtual mobile work experience for enterprise organizations.