Here's the hard truth: With increasing mobility, your best employees have already left the building. Business now happens on the march and the mobile devices that deliver the fastest access to data in the most efficient and expedient ways have become the preferred tools of the fleet-footed corporate professional. Top performers simply won't sit still for inferior solutions, so if their company doesn't supply the latest devices to help them succeed, they'll bring their own devices to work—to get the job done.

BYOD tablets and smartphones present significant security challenges, as employees connect to corporate Intranets, enterprise applications, file sharing servers, or instant messaging services over devices originally designed for consumer applications. Instead of limiting device choice, IT administrators have turned to solutions that bring enterprise-level security to the latest Apple, Android, and Windows Phone products, lowering their overall costs as they foster communication and collaboration among their entire workforce.

Making Device Choice A Safe Choice

Most employees simply choose their phone or tablet for its functionality; they don't know that their mobile devices are also capable of leaking information unintentionally. They have no idea that email and attachments sent over an Android phone can easily be viewed by anyone. Text messaging, social media, and consumer apps are other avenues by which private data can escape the confines of a mobile device. But instant access to information is critical to employee efficiency and effectiveness.

Thanks to new advances in mobile device management, organizations no longer have to choose between safety and efficiency. Employees can still have a highly personal, highly productive user experience without sacrificing the security of their company information. IT departments should consider the following steps to keep data secure and manageable, and employee satisfaction high:

• Use MDM tools to implement and monitor policies that are seamless to the end user
• Look to support the widest array of phones and tablets, including iOS and Android
• Educate employees about activities that can put corporate data at risk
• Keep employees aware of their company's security policies, legal liabilities, and industry regulatory requirements
• Survey your employees regularly about their use of mobile devices and involve them in developing your policies.

Monitoring and Managing Mobility

IT administrators of today's largest mobile fleets lean on Mobile Device Management (MDM) tools to prevent data loss and combat the unknowingly unsafe actions of their users. Good Technology provides MDM controls with the robust, foundational safeguards that protect your enterprise data at the application level—strong passwords, remote-wipes, restricted applications—to monitor and maintain security. Good recommends several key security strategies to support the mobility and security of your company's workforce:

Strong, dynamic passwords at the app level
Your MDM solution should allow you to monitor dynamic and complex passwords within business applications—not just at the device level. This allows employees to use their own device without having to enter a complex password every time they wish to send a personal text or update their Facebook status,

Remote-wipes that don't wipe out users
Typically, when an IT administrator erases corporate data from a device using MDM controls, an employee may lose their personal contacts, favorite apps, preference settings—and a sense of privacy. Look for MDM controls that can isolate corporate data for remote wipe, leaving users' personal information unscathed.

Protect users inside consumer apps
Many phones and tablets cannot address risky behavior that occurs within applications themselves—when users inadvertently share corporate data through 3rd party apps and cloud services. Find an MDM solution that controls security at the app level.

Whole Device Protection

When considering MDM options, IT departments should look to partner with a provider whose solutions allow them to set and manage security policies at both the application and the device level.

Good Technology offers a unique MDM security solution, providing app-level protection beyond device level encryption. Through patented technology that "containerizes" data at the app level—wrapping a layer of protection around enterprise-deployed apps—Good separates corporate data from an employee's private information, establishing a secure and trouble-free user experience.

Security from End to End

As enterprise data leaves the confines of your corporate servers and networks and moves into new areas of mobile app and cloud services, increasing emphasis on data integrity through end-to-end encryption continues to push companies like Good Technology to the forefront of data loss and security. With Good's security platform and MDM controls, IT also gets these features:

Enforce policies over-the-air. You can wipe specific applications and their data, wipe the entire device after a failed number of incorrect passwords, disable sequential numbers in passwords, or require special characters.

Protect with AES 192-bit encryption. Even data that's in transit between a device and servers behind your firewall gets military-grade encryption—so all information is secured end-to-end.

Restrict server access. Administrators can restrict access to servers, distribute tasks using role-based administration, delegate or restrict functions to other groups of administrators across multiple locations, or set global policies—all from any web-based browser.

Secure the network. Good Technology establishes an outbound connection before transmitting data to the enterprise firewall, so there's no need to open inbound ports and expose your network to rogue attacks or malware.

Disable the device. Strong controls include full device wipe, app black-listing, preventing apps from being installed, detecting jail-broken or rooted devices, disabling transfers and LAN access through Bluetooth, or preventing access to the App Store, YouTube, and the Safari browser, if necessary.