Enterprise mobility: the next major risk management challenge: boards must understand that enterprise mobility needs to be managed as a distinct strategy. Cyber risks abound, but careful governance now can provide executives with guidance and policies to exploit mobile technology for competitive advantage while minimizing disruptive threats. Here's how to move from awareness to action.

• Author: Chen, John
• Position: COVER STORY

One of your greatest strengths is also your greatest vulnerability. That is the dichotomy inherent in the rapid rise of mobile devices in the enterprise: they simultaneously present significant opportunity for business transformation and the most daunting information-security risk.

Corporate boards must be more diligent and proactive in driving secure enterprise mobility strategies, or they put at risk the core information and reputation of their companies. Mobile technology can streamline business processes and drive greater efficiency, open new channels for engaging customers and generate new revenue opportunities. However, mobile technology also is spawning security risks, with 38% of mobile users experiencing some form of cybercrime, according to a Symantec report this year.

A recent BlackBerry study found that respondents see mobile devices as the weakest link in an enterprise security framework. In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2017 the primary focus of endpoint breaches will shift to smartphones and tablets. Organizations also. worry that they underestimate risk because they focus on the device rather than their enterprise's entire enterprise mobility landscape.

A different survey, this time of consumers (a 2013 Norton report), found that half of respondents use their personal devices for work, but they don't take basic security precautions--a fact made more nerve-wracking from a risk management perspective because 27% of those users reported having had their device lost or stolen.

Far-reaching implications

It's easy to see why mobile technology is such an attractive target for cyber-criminals. So how should boards respond?

The exploding use of mobile devices has far-reaching implications for businesses that require boards to take action now before the potential problems become too big to address. Careful governance now can provide executives with guidance and policies to exploit mobile technology for competitive advantage while minimizing the jarring disruptions new technologies have traditionally engendered.

Boards need to seize the opportunities, but know the risks. Mobile business processes will simplify the way our employees work, but they will also introduce a new level of complexity to managing and governing business. Why? Because business processes typically held close to the vest will now be heavily linked to the outside world in new ways, riding public networks and airwaves to interact heavily with digital data from the...