There is always a debate about using personal devices for work purposes but it happens and will be more often as we see more and more millennial’s and other mobile workers chose their devices and adopt and merge them. Aside from teaching the knowledge worker the how and why of enterprise security there have been few solutions that have grabbed my attention as solutions for an enterprise for Android devices. Enter: Divide by Enterproid. It allows you to basically run two devices; one with person rights and admin as you would should it be your own phone and then allows you to perform enterprise functions by flipping to a secured partition of the OS that would have the detailed security policies of the company. This flipped side adheres to your company’s policies and is fully encrypted.
This is pretty cool and very useful. It will allow users and enterprises to co-exist while not giving up security details and requirements needed to make people and data safe. This could also have some interesting implications and uses in the medical world as hospitals and clinics are provided more options from smartphones to tablets.
You can also get signed up for the beta and check it out for yourself!
Jonathan,
This is a fascinating app. I have always been an iPhone advocate, but as I see more and more of my friends and colleagues using Android based smart phones, I am fascinated with all of the advancements that platform has had.
This particular application does seem like it could help solve the headache many of us have faced for a long time: carrying around two phones because one is for work, one is for personal use (for any number of reasons, such as that the employer does not pay for personal use or that the work data must be secured differently.) I know someone who has to enter something like 3 different passwords just to log into his Blackberry for work, and he works for a major bank in the US.
One of my concerns would be knowing when to make the “switch-over” from the personal side of the phone to the private/work side. I guess you would do this any time you wish to access work email, for instance, but does the line get blurred when you open up a browser to do something for work, etc..?
Its pretty cool. I haven’t used it but from the website, you basically switch over for business stuff (email, enterprise apps) and then you go back and forth. Bit of a pain, initially, but I think as security starts to clamp down more on personal devices for business use people will find the switching less painful. Also, don’t underestimate the power of them improving the experience at the Android platform grows.
This is definitely a cool function that open platforms can allow. VMWare actually piloted this technology with both Windows Mobile and Android about two years ago. Some of the struggles were around the Voice side, notifications, usage, etc. Agreeing with Erin, the idea behind switching was a challenge VMWare faced of when to use work and when to use personal. As far as the BlackBerry side though, that most likely won’t change – the reason for multiple passwords are for multi-factor authentication, something most smart phones are missing – and other smartphone solutions typically just lean towards weakening the security policy in favor for these devices. It’s a direction many organizations are going in.
Another piece from the VMWare side that was challenging was if this is a personal device, how do you deal with exited employees, do you have to touch each of those devices to return it to its core operating system?
A concern I have too is from alerting, how the alerting works between profiles as well as how much storage and utilization you wish to “give up” by running in essence, two operating systems on a mobile device.
I do see this evolving though and turning into a great tool for many organizations. Great post Jonathan!