Securing BYOD and company-provided mobile devices

Financial institution CUA has implemented a new solution to protect data and applications on its fleet of company-owned and BYOD mobile devices.

In late 2013, due to a decreasing appetite for BlackBerry devices across the organisation, CUA elected to discontinue support for BlackBerry, retiring their BES (BlackBerry Enterprise Server) and allowing staff to use iOS, Android or Windows devices. CUA then faced the challenge of securing its fleet of mobile devices, which comprised both company-supplied and BYOD devices. This needed to be done to effectively manage risk of data leakage, while still enabling staff to effectively collaborate and access selected work applications.

Over the past 18 months, CUA has also been investing in the development of new ‘branch of the future’ retail locations. These branches incorporate new technology including iPads for customers to play, learn, explore and transact. In order to effectively manage and secure these devices, the organisation required a mobile device management (MDM) capability as part of its secure mobility platform.

With the decision to discontinue support for BlackBerry and embrace BYOD alongside company-owned devices, CUA needed the ability to secure mobile data and applications and guard against data leakage.

“Security credentials were absolutely essential for us,” said David Gee, chief information officer at CUA. “As a retail financial institution, we need to have the trust of our 400,000 customers and therefore cannot compromise on security at all.”

To meet these requirements, CUA selected Good for Enterprise. The solution securely manages data and devices, and allows mobile email, calendar information, contact details, browser access, task management and document sharing.

The solution provides ‘secure container architecture’ - it encrypts company information, such as emails and documents, and keeps it separate from an employee’s personal data and apps.

Gee said the solution’s “containerisation approach was very compelling. The separation of corporate and private data and applications makes a lot of sense in a BYOD context. It gives us confidence that corporate information pushed out to devices won’t be compromised or leak outside of the organisation by cross-contamination with personal applications.”

CUA has rolled out Good for Enterprise to secure a mobile fleet of around 400 tablets and mobile phones, with iOS representing around 70%, Android 15% and a mix of OS X and Windows making up the remainder.

With the solution, Gee said CUA has “a very robust and secure platform for mobile collaboration and, looking towards the future, mobile productivity applications”.

“Our initial focus was on ensuring we had a secure mobility platform in place that supported iOS, Android and Windows users,” said Gee. “This has enabled us to confidently deploy applications like email, calendaring, contacts and browser knowing that [the solution’s] secure container is protecting them and the associated data.”

CUA has six new branches located across Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales, each equipped with a number of self-service iPads that allow customers to perform a variety of functions such as checking their account balance, transferring funds or submitting loan applications. The Good solution enables CUA’s IT team to have visibility of the in-branch devices, including set-up and configuration, application deployment, patching and updates, monitoring and settings.