Mobile Security Critical for BI

Business intelligence solutions use a company’s most important data to chart the business’s future course. This centrality to operations means the applications are full of helpful information, just the kind of thing a cyber criminal would like to steal. This means that it is important for companies to ensure their BI deployments are guarded by powerful security features. A shift toward mobile development could confuse the picture further, as tablets and smartphones are very vulnerable to data breach if devices are lost and stolen.

Business intelligence solutions use a company’s most important data to chart the business’s future course. This centrality to operations means the applications are full of helpful information, just the kind of thing a cyber criminal would like to steal. This means that it is important for companies to ensure their BI deployments are guarded by powerful security features. A shift toward mobile development could confuse the picture further, as tablets and smartphones are very vulnerable to data breach if devices are lost and stolen. Mobile protection is vital, especially when the devices involved contain powerful programs like BI.

Mobility and protection
The race to adopt mobile technology in the workplace has been accompanied by a general increase in the number and severity of threats facing companies. According to a Dimensional Research report sponsored by security firm CheckPoint, 93 percent of respondent IT workers noted that their companies now allow mobile devices onto the corporate network, with 67 percent not restricting that to company-issued smartphones and tablets. This is due to the ongoing bring-your-own-device movement.

With consumer handsets becoming a popular enterprise device class, the risk of data loss is now high, meriting a response. The Dimensional survey found that 79 percent of respondents encountered some type of mobility trouble in the preceding year. There are now many different operating systems at use within offices and a large community of cyber criminals eager to steal data from those many ecosystems. This does not mean enterprises should stop mobile efforts – but they should not go on unprepared.

Making mobile BI work
Moving business intelligence onto a mobile platform is an excellent agility-building strategy, provided users pick software that can keep their data safe and secure. The specter of a costly data breach now hangs over the choice of a BI solution. In the modern environment, the ideal technology will be able to deal with a variety of operating systems, making it work within the BYOD model, and also keep information secure.

The benefits of mobile business intelligence are worth the extra consideration. With a strong program to give employees BI data on the go, companies can keep their workers in the loop, even when out on sales calls, working from home or traveling between offices. The new efficiency comes from eliminating the need to return to a PC to become aware of the latest BI results, and as such mobility could be an excellent extension for companies’ growing self-service BI programs.

(Mobile BI / shutterstock)