The silver bullet.

Throughout history and lore, the silver bullet has been ascribed the role of the ultimate problem solver. When a seemingly impossible-to-defeat threat loomed overhead, the silver bullet was the answer. It’s the perfect solution to effectively eradicate whatever major challenge manifests itself.

Seeking Solutions to Mobile Challenges

Outside of folklore, the term silver bullet is prevalent in the enterprise, most recently in reference to solving the myriad of mobile challenges facing organizations today. While mobile devices have had a transformative impact on the enterprise by enabling a more connected, productive workforce, there are still dangers around security that must be solved.

Looking at these enterprise challenges through our mobile lens, one silver-bullet solution that organizations continuously seek involves securing all data at all mobile touch points.

The question often posed is as follows: If we can just secure the data and content, do we really have to worry about anything else?

It’s a question Tyler Shields gets — and gets quite often.

“If you could secure the data, you really don’t have to worry about anything else. The problem is you can’t truly 100 percent secure the data in isolation — it’s technically impossible,” Shields said.

So theoretically, yes, a silver bullet here would be perfect. Unfortunately, with an increasingly complicated multi-OS, bring-your-own-device (BYOD) environment, this solution enterprises are searching for simply does not exist.

Recommendations for Secure Content and Collaboration

Instead of staying in the realm of folklore and wasting time with mobile security alchemy in hopes of conjuring up this nonexistent silver bullet, Shields recommended taking other precautions that will effectively protect the content and data in your organization’s mobile environment.

This includes securing the content and collaboration facilities you’re utilizing as much as you can. You should do this for wherever the mobile touch points and integrations can be executed within. Doing so creates a secure environment to empower and enable mobile collaboration between your end users.

Taking this advice into consideration, your organization will be best equipped at dealing with this challenge by deploying a secure, encrypted container.

Deploying a Content Suite

“Absolutely put something on your mobile device that puts data — at rest and in transit, from and to the device — in an encrypted space,” Shields stated.

IBM’s MaaS360 Content Suite does just that. It delivers a simple, scalable, cloud-based way to distribute, manage and safeguard docs and data on the mobile devices within your organization.

Employees are able to edit, view, sync and share content across mobile devices. They can do so within a security-rich, dual-persona, encrypted container that effectively separates the personal side of the device from the corporate side.

Your organization can manage the environment by establishing security policies around each document and effortlessly distribute them to users, groups or individual devices, which creates a highly personalized, seamless and compliant user experience. You can also mitigate the risks of lost and compromised devices by locating and remotely wiping them to keep their contents safe from prying eyes.

Follow the IBM Mobile Security Framework for Success

Secure content and collaboration is an essential component of the IBM Mobile Security Framework. This also includes protecting devices, safeguarding apps and data, and managing access and fraud. It’s a necessary step for your organization.

Rather than continuously toil away searching for the silver bullet to your mobile content and collaboration security conundrum, your organization should follow the aforementioned recommendations to ensure you’re providing the secure environment necessary to spur collaboration, productivity and efficiency with your mobile workforce.