“Many enterprise security teams now regard cloud-based security technology as the best approach to provide effective security controls that allow non-corporate mobile devices to mix safely with enterprise networks, applications and data”, Hochmuth observed.
The rise of mobile devices and social media are driving IT to take a different approach to information security, said Peter Galvin, chief marketing officer at Proofpoint. IT needs to have the “security and compliance capability on top of these new consumer technologies”, he said.
“There is this trend of bringing your own device to work, BYOD, and I think it is a challenge for IT organizations to be able to put in place the proper security compliance requirements”, he added.
Proofpoint is offering a cloud-based product to secure mobile devices called Proofpoint Mobile, a family of applications that extend the company’s email security, compliance and archiving products to mobile devices. The mobile product runs on Proofpoint CloudControl, a security and compliance platform, and is delivered either through native applications or mobile-optimized web-based applications.
“One of the ways to help IT secure mobile devices, email communications, and other types of communication is using a cloud platform that provides the ability to handle millions of transactions at reduced costs”, he said.
Galvin said that medical industry is one area where his company is seeing an increasing demand for mobile security, particularly in response to tightening of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) privacy rules.
“We are seeing more desire by doctors and patients to communicate via email. Where many users are on road, being able to view those emails in a secure fashion on your phone has become very important”, Galvin said.
“One of the areas that mobile encryption is very popular now is in the healthcare environment. Whenever there is potentially private health information in an email correspondence, that email automatically becomes encrypted [using the Proofpoint Mobile product], thereby meeting the requirements of the HIPAA regulation”, he said.