Smartphones really worth the risk?
If you’ve paid any attention to smartphone news over the last few years, you probably know that Blackberry is on it’s way out of the corporate world. Unable to compete with more innovative Android and Apple devices, Blackberry’s grip on the market it once owned has slipped away.
This has left many diehard Blackberry fans disappointed and IT departments are having to make decisions about which of the competing mobile platforms is right for their business.
Android and iOS both have their balance of pros and cons, but when it comes to security, what mix of functionality and risk is your business comfortable with?
The downside of customizability
When it comes to the ability to customize mobile devices to your business’ needs, Android is the clear winner. The open source components of Android can be tweaked and modified to be an exact fit for a business’ specific wants and needs.
Unfortunately, the ability for extreme customization comes with some downsides. Each customized component must be specifically tested for potential exploits and it’s rare for these tests to actually take place.
The customization and fragmentation of the Android ecosystem has resulted in a situation where 99% percent of mobile malware is targeted at Android devices.
A walled garden
iOS represents a completely different approach to mobile architecture. Apple has built iOS so that customers are very limited on how they can modify the operating system and mobile applications are required to go through a thorough approval process before they can be installed on devices.
This locked-down environment leaves many customers feeling caged-in by the limits imposed on them and forces the use of expensive management applications that use complex work-arounds to control and customize iOS devices.
The upside to this architecture is that security has been much less of an issue for iOS users. The exploits that do occur are normally patched fairly quickly across the whole population of iOS devices since there is much less fragmentation than what exists in the Android ecosystem.
Finding a balance
Balancing flexibility and risk has always been a challenge for business owners. As new technologies are introduced into the market these making these decisions is becoming harder and more complex.
When it comes to mobile operating systems, what balance has your company decided on?
