Zenprise offers help with bring-your-own-device chaos

Enterprise mobility firm Zenprise is addressing the growing trend towards the consumerisation of IT with a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) toolkit designed to safeguard corporate data while allowing employees to use a device of their choice for work.

Announced on Monday, the Zenprise BYOD Tool Kit comprises the Rogue Device Assessment, a checklist of best practices, and a whitepaper on mobile security largely extolling the capabilities in Zenprise's MobileManager platform.

Zenprise claimed that enterprises are having their hands forced by employees who are covertly using devices such as tablets and smartphones for work purposes, and that the growing use of such equipment makes mobile device management a necessity.

However, the company also said that IT departments could use this as a chance to properly mobilise their IT, rather than seeing it as a threat to be prevented.

"Many companies fear BYOD, but we believe it is a great opportunity for enterprises to mobilise their business. Our BYOD Tool Kit takes the fear out of BYOD and lets IT say yes to mobile device choice," said Zenprise chief marketing officer Ahmed Datoo.

Zenprise said that the Rogue Device Assessment can identify all unmanaged endpoint devices on a corporate network, and produce a report detailing the frequency of device connections, plus a breakdown by type and operating system.

Meanwhile, the Enterprise Mobility Executive Checklist provides a set of best practices, outlining key management considerations for deploying, securing and managing mobile devices, Zenprise said.

The final piece of the BYOD Tool Kit is the Zenprise Security Whitepaper, which discusses the firm's Enterprise Security Framework.

This consists of a multi-tiered approach to security in the Zenprise MobileManager platform, with protective measures in place at the application, network and mobile device levels of the infrastructure.

For example, the firm recently announced a mobile data leak prevention tool that creates a secure container on the endpoint for storing all corporate data.

MobileManager also provides application-specific secure tunnels back to the corporate network, and includes a Mobile Gateway that monitors incoming traffic from mobile devices for suspicious activity.