CIOs Battle Mobile Devices

The life of a CIO is not easy anymore. There used to be a time when the IT community used to drive IT initiatives within an organization. Now the tables have turned. We have to support several IT initiatives, which the user community has started taking.

More people are now buying consumer products such as the iPad and iPhone, and want to access mails on it. At times we feel surprised that the end users know something more than we do. They will say that Android is not supporting so and so version. Probably as a CIO you may not have been so much into mobile technologies. I think the industry will take some time to get used to it.

Security has become a big challenge for CIOs because of mobile devices. Therefore, it is important to have a policy framework in place, and we must make sure that what we enable these devices within the given IT governance framework in the organization. Going forward, we'll have to find out how we can use such technologies across the organization, rather than enabling and activating them for a handful of users.

Unless there is a process in place, things could become more challenging. So, before we enable any new activity or initiative, it should first be mapped with your existing security policy and be checked for possible vulnerabilities.

Standardization is very important. If you enable ten different things for your user group, it becomes very tough. The user community must be told about the pros and cons. If you have already come across a challenge in integrating a particular device, better tell the people in advance that they should avoid it in future. So, integration of IT governance process with key IT initiatives is very important. They should know what is doable and what is not.

How are you handling the 'mobile' revolution in your organization?