Earlier today, November 11^th,  MobileIron announced the release of a key component of its enterprise mobility management (EMM) platform, putting into play new capabilities that the company believes will help accelerate the adoption of Android (News - Alert) in the enterprise. Many enterprise IT groups do not consider Android a highly secure mobile environment, and often preclude its use, especially within highly secure and sensitive application and data environments.

Android adoption has also lagged due to the fragmented state of Android across a large collection of devices. Numerous Android versions run across numerous smartphones and tablets, which enterprises consider risky. Further, earlier versions of Android are not nearly as secure as later versions, and enterprises simply believe it is much easier to prohibit Android use entirely rather than to try and engage it in a possibly complex device OS management scenario. 


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A key issue however is that Android is hugely popular and it simply isn't feasible in today's full-fledged BYOD world to simply try and preclude Android devices. Two issues in particular have exacerbated the situation:

• BlackBerry's (News - Alert) decline: As a result of a September 2013 recommendation from a leading analyst firm, as well as for reasons of BlackBerry's own self-induced decline, many Global 2000 companies are now considering a rapid and complete migration from BlackBerry;
• Employee demand: According to IDC (News - Alert) analysis, Android passed 75-percent market share of smartphone shipments in the second quarter of 2013, making it the dominant smartphone operating system globally and the preferred choice of many employees in BYOD programs.

The problem for companies looking to move away from BlackBerry is that they can't simply leave BlackBerry for Android. Businesses must account for security issues and must be able to provide the same complete and consistent approach to security that was available through BlackBerry. What's an enterprise to do given these intertwined scenarios?

Last year, MobileIron took a first step at solving the riddle when it introduced AppConnect, mobile management technology that containerizes business apps across Android devices and operating system versions to address fragmentation. This was a very useful first step but did not deliver on 100 percent of the security businesses require - IT still had to weigh just how much security might still be needed that might prevent Android from serving as a BYOD option.

With the new Q4 2013 release of MobileIron for Android, however, MobileIron has now delivered the necessary components to drive 100 percent of the security needed to enable enterprises to reliably make the switch to Android with full peace of mind. The Q4 2013 release of MobileIron for Android now delivers the productivity apps employees need and those final elements of data protection IT requires.

New Features

The Q4 2013 release of MobileIron for Android gives enterprise IT significant mobile application flexibility across Android devices. We've highlighted some of the key features below.

Secure email and PIM:

• Through a partnership with Divide, MobileIron now provides a complete email and PIM capability.  The new Divide PIM solution provides a secure native email, contacts, calendar and tasks experience across all Android devices and all OS versions. Content is encrypted and stored in a secure container on the mobile device and all configuration and data loss prevention (DLP) policies are set through MobileIron. The MobileIron platform also provides email attachment protection, secure browsing for embedded URLs, identity and access management (IAM) for client and server access, and secure tunneling for ActiveSync traffic;
• For enterprises using IBM (News - Alert) Notes, IBM Notes Traveler is now available with AppConnect integration. This means that an IBM Notes Traveler client for Android can now finally be containerized and secured by an EMM platform;
• For enterprises now using Samsung KNOX, MobileIron provisions and configures enterprise email, including the setting and enforcement of security controls over user-created personal accounts, email forwarding, and HTML email.

Secure content and collaboration:

• The most popular and advanced content and collaboration apps for business users are now available in the MobileIron AppConnect ecosystem. This quarter, Accellion, Acronis mobilEcho, Novell (News - Alert), and many others are launching new versions of their AppConnect-enabled solutions.

Secure browsing:

• MobileIron’s secure browsing solution, Web@Work, now offers browser-specific tunneling to access corporate web resources without the need for device-wide VPN.

Data protection:

• The Q4 2013 launch of MobileIron for Android adds FIPS 140-2, which defines the appropriate cryptographic standards to protect data at rest and data in motion in public sector and regulated environments. MobileIron’s use of FIPS 140-2 cryptographic libraries for Android has now been validated by an accredited Cryptographic and Security (CST) laboratory in full compliance with the Cryptographic Module Validation Program (CMVP);
• MobileIron now offers production support for KNOX containerization (KNOX resides on Samsung devices). High security organizations will find MobileIron's use of KNOX to be a solid security capability.

Secure Single Sign-On:

• MobileIron now offers secure single sign on (SSO) support for both web and native applications on Android. The app or browser presents an identity certificate to the MobileIron Sentry intelligent access gateway. Sentry uses Kerberos Constrained Delegation (KCD) to get a Kerberos ticket that allows a secure connection to be established to the enterprise so that the app or browser can access enterprise resources without the employee needing to sign in each time.

All in all, the new MobileIron for Android release covers a great deal of new ground. It certainly adds the missing security pieces that have kept many - if not most - organizations from allowing Android to become a core piece of their BYOD strategies. It looks now to be full speed ahead for getting Android up to speed within the enterprise.