As mobile gains more capabilities and access to company data, mobile devices continue to play an important role in how workers do their jobs. Information workers are no longer tied to their PCs — smartphones, tablets, and laptops give them the flexibility to choose the device that best suits the context of each task performed. The internet of things (IoT) represents the next leap in business transformation, changing how enterprises sense, analyze, and control their connected worlds. However, as the number of devices and things that touch sensitive organizational data increases, the complexity of managing and securing a growing attack surface also grows. Employees expect consistency in management and capabilities across all of the devices they use for work; however, the majority of organizations take a disconnected approach, using disparate teams and tools for endpoint management and security. In order to reduce the amount of friction and internal complexity, organizations need to consider both device-specific and device-agnostic approaches dependent on their use cases, where device-agnostic controls are focused at the application and data layers across all device types, regardless of form factor.
Applying artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, such as cognitive computing and machine learning, to the analysis of all the new data created in such a paradigm is not only transformational but required as the device count (and complexity) rises. Organizations will be able to take this flood of data and uncover business insights to further propel the convergence of the management and security of these currently disparate endpoint form factors, leading to a future state of unified endpoint management.
In October 2016, IBM commissioned Forrester Consulting to evaluate the means by which enterprises are managing and securing various endpoint form factors today and how strategies will change over the next three years. In conducting an in-depth survey of 556 IT and security leaders in the US, the UK, Germany, India, and Australia, Forrester found that while enterprises have a decentralized approach to managing and securing smartphones, tablets, laptops, and IoT today, they will move to a more consolidated — and cognitive — approach by 2020.
Read the whole report from IBM here.
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