Mobile Data
– Chris Grossman, Senior Vice President of Enterprise Applications, Rand Secure Data, says:
These days, smartphones and tablets are commonplace in the office. Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) initiatives are widespread and many organizations issue company-owned smartphones and tablets to employees, as well. Unfortunately with corporate data residing on mobile devices, enterprises now face new sources of potentially unrecoverable data loss and an increased need for mobile data management.
Traditional approaches to enterprise backup simply aren’t well suited to mobile data. Many organizations rely on the following process: users sync their smartphone or tablet with their computer and then the computer is backed up using the system-wide backup solution. Unfortunately, most users don’t sync their devices every day and when employees are on the road it could be days or weeks before their data is safely backed up.
The modern technology landscape demands a modern backup solution. Your organization may want to consider implementing a backup product which is explicitly designed to accommodate data that’s located on mobile devices. Look for the following features:
- An app that can be easily downloaded to employees’ smartphones and tablets. This should facilitate automatic backups, invisible to the user, as well as on-demand backups that users can launch.
- Secure backup of mobile devices, as long as the devices are connected to a local network or WAN connection.
- Data reduction techniques, such as compression and block level deduplication, which reduces the amount of WAN bandwidth required for backups.
- The ability for mobile users to restore their own data anytime.
Smartphones and tablets are making businesses more productive. If your data gets stranded out in the world, however, mobile devices may increase enterprise risk. It doesn’t have to be that way. Adopt a data backup solution that addresses all data created on mobile devices and sleep a little easier, no matter where your organization’s data roams.
About the Author
As a Senior Vice President, Chris Grossman manages the Enterprise Applications division of Rand Worldwide, including the Rand Secure Data division. Contact Chris at cgrossman@rand.com or visit www.randsecuredata.com.
