Will it save your business – or sink it, once and for all? Enterprise mobility could take your enterprise either way, if you neglect the critical aspects of mobile IT administration and specifically mobile IT security.

Here’s the problem. Before mobile, the IT department had a grip, more or less, on the use of IT, data protection, and system and application security. Why? Because back then, IT was centralized, cloud was but a gleam in a few rebels’ eyes, and the IT team could rely on corporate firewalls to keep users in and attackers out.

But now? In a mobile business world, the old boundaries no longer exist. End-users can bring in their own mobile devices and apps. They can load up corporate mobile devices with apps from online stores outside the company’s control. Levels of security on mobiles may vary widely, and the challenge of keeping some semblance of security in place is increased by the ease with which end users can procure devices and their instinctive reaction to do anything and everything with them.

Companies cannot reverse this phenomenon. Despite admin and security issues, mobile working is too valuable for them to ignore it. Mobile apps offer their employees flexibility, responsiveness, and competitiveness. The mobile and mobile app model is also ingrained in the rising tide of millennials in the workplace. These are the digital natives for whom life, work, and collaboration online is second nature, and who consider PCs, printers, and fixed line phones to be relics from the past.

Yet for similar reasons, mobile apps are also targeted by hackers and cybercriminals. They recognize the potential of infected apps for pilfering company data and confidential information, espionage, sabotage, and other unauthorized remotely controlled activities.

Fortunately, all is not lost in terms of administration and security – given the right organization and a different mindset compared to the old one-firewall-does-it-all days. To be an effective mobile IT administrator also means using new tools to avoid spreading rogue apps and to protect end-users from their own risky app downloads, tools that are rapid, easy to use, affordable, and effective.

With these characteristics, such tools can be made available to mobile IT administrators in different business units or branches of an enterprise. They can fit in easily with development teams producing mobile apps to help the company to reach its business goals. They can even offer end-users self-help. Mobile IT administration may now have extended beyond the capabilities of the traditional monolithic IT department, but the right tools can accompany the rise and rise of enterprise mobility, offering easy to access possibilities to check new apps and new versions for security flaws, weaknesses, and risks.

Mobile IT administrators can also combine their security checking solution with leading enterprise mobility management (EMM) platforms for efficient distribution of apps, new versions, and more. Binary or source code, internal or external development, cloud or on-premise download, the latest generation of app security testing technology ensures that in enterprise mobility, mobile apps do not have to become mobile oops(!).

If you want to learn more about enterprise mobility security, join this webinar at 1 pm EST on August 10th, where our CTO Ken Lloyd will be discussing mobile security, security awareness and IT security, and how you can make the most out of mobility without having to run any unacceptable risks.