Wrap an App – A New Concept to Tackle BYOD Security Issues

The BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) concept has created a tussle between securing sensitive corporate data and information and respecting employee's freedom of using his device and installed apps. This issue continues to intensify further, as more and more employees are adapting to BYOD culture and using their own smart devices professional use. This statement gets the support of Gartner, which says that by 2018, the number of people using their personal devices for professional purposes will rise by 70 percent.

Business owners have realized the intensity of this problem and started adopting various techniques and tools to enhance data security without hampering employee's right of using their device freely. MDM or Mobile Device Management is one such technique, which involves managing and controlling devices that belong to the end user. Restricting or containing the enterprise data has its own share of drawbacks. The most effective and user-friendly way to achieve both the results at the same time is MAM or Mobile Access Management. It runs on the concept of wrapping the data and information that a business owner thinks should be kept private from the employees. Through MAM concept, business owners can hide the confidential data and information within the personal device of the user without affecting employee's access to his own smart phone. He has full access to his personal apps like Facebook, Skype, watsapp and others.

The concept of app wrapping has unique benefits. The most important benefit is that it gives an exceptional control over the security of the confidential data. Moreover, the IT department of a company can wrap an existing app without requiring the re-compilation or changes in the software code. This helps in effective and centralized management of enterprise mobile apps without any turbulence.

The concept of apps wrapping involves the ability to control certain aspects of enterprise apps for security reasons in most cases. The essential step involves setting up a dynamic library and adding it to the existing binary that is responsible for controlling certain aspects of an app. For example, you can change the setting of an app at its start up so that it requires an authentication password. In addition, admin can intercept the communication so that it is forced to use company's VPN or virtual private network system. The admin can also restrict the access of sensitive and confidential data such as QuickBooks through unauthorized devices. The end-result of using app wrapping concept is that the policies set by IT admin would become a set of dynamic libraries, which will be implemented on the top of every app's native binary. In case of the iPhone, the IT admin can use the XCode to retrieve iPhone Application Archive (.ipa) file and add dynamic libraries to create a new app that has a very different out
look and approach. The concept is highly worthy if a company requires an advanced security system for data protection.

Meanwhile, apps wrapping is an effective mode of mobile application management and is capable of securing enterprise data and apps. I have personally witnessed how workers are leery and conscious about their personal phones being managed and restricted by their companies. App wrapping allows business owners to perform the same operation but the other way around. I am sure in future, it will emerge as a more contemporary and a secure approach of operating data driven business environment because of its ability to wrap a security shield around confidential data and business apps.