The Rise of the mobile workforce

It’s a common practice these days. Wherever you are, all you need to do is pick up your smartphone or wireless device and check emails that have been pushed from your inbox. You can then respond to urgent mails or use instant messaging. Welcome to the modern, mobile working world. 

With the availability of faster network access, wireless devices such as laptops, tablets and smartphones, the traditional office space can be re-created just about anywhere as employees are “always on”, surfing the internet, communicating with colleagues and others through instant messaging (IM) platforms, and accessing data and applications critical to the business. It is estimated that by 2013, the mobile work population will grow to 1.19 billion, accounting for 34.9% of the workforce. IDC analysts report that the largest numbers of mobile workers today are to be found in the Asia- acific region. The Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) of Singapore conducts a half-yearly statistical study each year (Statistics on Telecom Services), and in February 2011, it revealed that the republic had a mobile penetration rate of 144.2%. This statistic meant that the average resident in the country owned and used 1.4 mobile devices on a regular basis. 

This trend is both bane and boon to businesses – on one hand, employees are deemed more productive regardless of where they are. On the flipside, IT departments in companies face new challenges as employees become more mobile as they need to find ways to monitor and secure the online interactions of roaming workers. 

Your business never sleeps. The threats don’t either.

As IT teams and managers grapple with a growing mobile workforce, an evolving threat landscape and the ever-present challenge of maximizing resources, many companies are turning to hosted solutions or cloudbased assurance models to deal with security and management issues. Cloud-based management goes one step further than traditional internal infrastructure-based security controls. Instead of machine-by-machine, on premise installation, employees everywhere can access the same cloud service, which is operated and managed centrally over the Internet.  

With email, web and IM traffic being redirected to the hosted service provider, in-house IT personnel can focus on other business critical projects. This takes the pressure off organizations to maintain skilled resources to manage and secure the workforce. Moreover, cloud-based services offer a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) when compared to in- ouse solutions as they are designed to watch out for and stop threats before they infiltrate a corporate network. 

However, prior to adopting this computing model, IT departments must understand and believe in the efficacy of cloud-based services. In addition, consider the impact on your business: Using services with automated capabilities to enforce end-user policies can help gain and/or maintain the confidence of customers and business partners. Cloudbased security solutions are the way forward for integrated and all-round protection.