Bottom Line: 2020 is going to be the year companies launch more digital business initiatives that depend on BYOD than ever before, making Zero Trust Security a key contributor to their success.
Financial Services firms are at an inflection point going into 2020. Mobile-first products and services now dominate their product roadmaps for next year, with applications’ speed and security being paramount. In fintech, DevOps teams have been working with AngularJS for years now, and the scale and speed of their applications reflect their expertise. How well existing IT infrastructure flexes to support the new mobile-first product and services strategies depends on how quickly members of IT, customer service, and customer success teams can respond. BYOD is proving invaluable in achieving the speed of response these new digital business models require.
In 2020 more employees of Financial Services firms will rely on their mobile devices as their primary form of digital ID than has ever been the case before. A recent survey conducted by IDG in association with MobileIron found that 89% of security leaders believe mobile devices will be the primary digital ID employees use to gain access to resources and get work done. The CIOs I’ve spoken agree. A copy of the IDG and MobileIron study, Say Goodbye to Passwords, can be downloaded here.
Counting On BYOD To Deliver Responsiveness And Speed
CIO and IT bonuses are often indexed to the revenue contributions their new products and services deliver, making speed, scale, security, and responsiveness the most important features of all. Fintech CIOs are saying that BYOD is proving indispensable in scaling IT in support of new digital business initiatives as a result. By 2022, 75% of smartphones used in the enterprise will bring your own device (BYOD), up from 35% in 2018, forcing a migration from device-centric management to app- and data-centric management, according to Gartner’s Competitive Landscape: Managed Mobility Services.
Two factors continue to propel BYOD adoption in financial services, fueling the need for Zero Trust Security across every mobile device. The first is the need for real-time responsiveness from internal team members and the second is having every threat surface protected without degrading the time to respond to customers. Every CIO, IT and Product Management leader I’ve spoken with mention the race they are in to deliver mobile-first products and services early in 2020 that redefine their business. With every identity being a new security perimeter, Financial Services firms are relying on Unified Endpoint Management (UEM), multi-factor authentication (MFA), and additional zero trust-enabling technologies as an integral part of their Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) strategy. Their goal is to create a Zero Trust Security framework that protects every mobile device endpoint. Leaders in this field include MobileIron, who also provides zero sign-on (ZSO), and mobile threat defense (MTD) in addition to UEM and EMM solutions today. The following are the key features every BYOD program needs to offer to stay secure, scale and succeed in 2020:
- Separation of business and personal data is a must-have in any BYOD security strategy. FinTechs who have the greatest success with BYOD as part of their digital initiatives are relying on Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) to selectively wipe only the business data from a device in the event it is compromised.
- An interactive, intuitive user experience that can be quickly customized at scale by role, department, and workflow requirements without impacting user productivity. Too often BYOD users have had to trade off having stronger security on their own devices versus using a company-provided smartphone to get remote work done. The best EMM and UEM solutions in the market today enable Zero Trust by treating every identity as a new security perimeter.
- Define the success of a BYOD security strategy by how well it immediately shuts down access to confidential data and systems first. Being able to immediately block access to confidential systems and data is the most important aspect of securing any BYOD across a network.
- Limit access to internal system resources based on the employee’s department, role, and function to eliminate the risk of confidential data ending up in a personal app. EMM solutions have progressed quickly, especially on the dimension of providing Zero Trust Security across BYOD networks. Look for an EMM solution that gives the administrator the flexibility of limiting mobile device access to a specific series of services and access points based on an employees’ role in a specific department and the scope of data they need access to.
- Proven multi-operating system expertise and support for legacy internally created mobile applications and services. One of the main reasons BYOD is succeeding today as an enablement strategy is the freedom it gives users to select the device they prefer to work with. Supporting Android and IOS is a given. Look for advanced EMM and UEM solutions that also support legacy mobility applications. The best BYOD security solutions deliver device and application compatibility with no degradation in security or performance.
Conclusion – Why BYOD Strategies Need Zero Trust Now
Trust-but-verify isn’t working today. Attackers are capitalizing on it by stealing or buying privileged access credentials, accessing any system or database they choose. Financial Services firms fully expect their new products and services launching in 2020 to face an onslaught of breach and hacking attempts. Trust-but-verify approaches that are propagated across an enterprises’ BYOD base of devices using Virtual Private Networks and demilitarized zones (DMZ) impede employee’s productivity, often force login authentication. Trust-but verify doesn’t scale well into BYOD scenarios, leaving large gaps attackers can gain access to valuable internal data and systems. For BYOD users, trust-but-verify reduces productivity, delivers poor user experiences, and for new business models, slower customer response times.
By going to a Zero Trust Framework, Financial Services firms will be able to treat every identity and the mobile device they are using as their new security perimeter. Basing a BYOD strategy on a Zero Trust Framework enables any organization to find the correlation between the user, device, applications, and networks in milliseconds, thwarting potential threats before granting secure access to the device. Leaders delivering Zero Trust for BYOD include MobileIron, who provides endpoint management (UEM) capabilities with enabling technologies of zero sign-on (ZSO) user and device authentication, multi-factor authentication (MFA), and mobile threat detection (MTD).