And this belief, he says, is what makes Good Technology a “cool vendor”. Good Technology, he told Infosecurity at Infosecurity Europe 2014, enables business functionality. “We’re trying to be better than the native user experience, and we’re enabling people to do their jobs better. Our philosophy starts with the user”.
It’s this very philosophy that attracted Van Someren, former founder and CTO of nCipher, to Good Technology. “Securing data on mobile devices is an enabler, and I wanted to sell something that enables people, not something that the customer has to solve. Good builds products that make people more productive”. People want enterprise mobility, he says. “Nobody wants security, they just want to get their job done.”
Mobility, he continued, “is the most fast moving part of the industry. Security it being brought out from behind the firewall. An organization’s most valuable assets are being mobilized, and I love that [mobile security] lets you get business done.”
MDM – the acronym for mobile device management – should actually stand for mobile data management according to Van Someren. “Controls need to be put around the data, not the device”, he told Infosecurity. “Data is the most valuable asset for any organization and it needs to be classified.”
With the right security in place, should all data be mobilized? “Almost all”, answered Van Someren. “Classified top secret information should only be viewed in secure environments, so it’s not logical to mobilize this data”, he said. “But that’s an environmental issue, not a technology issue. With that exception, it makes sense to mobilize all other data where it is valuable to do so.”
Good Technology products are designed to be as idiot-proof as possible, Van Someren said. “But there’s no such thing as idiot-proof. A better idiot can always be made. Technology always has limits because it involves people.”