Greatest Threat to Enterprise Mobility: Employee’s Children

When you were in high school or college, your list of life goals probably did not include “navigate the Sandwich Generation phenomenon successfully.” If it did, you are a genius and we need to talk. For the rest of us, we had zero preparation for the moment of epiphany when we realized we were a card carrying member of the Sandwich Generation.

For me, the moment was when I sat with my mom and showed her how to use the iPad 2 for the first time. She was hesitant to interact with the iOS interface and every action she made was with extreme caution. Conversely, the first time my son was introduced to an iPad, at roughly 18 months old, he showed no inhibitions and started switching screens and moving icons with zero instruction.

As children get older and more adept at navigating mobile operating systems and various apps, they can also get themselves into some trouble. If you have a child, you have most likely experienced an “unauthorized” App or In-App purchase (thank you Freemium Apps). "Unauthorized" in this sense means that you, as a parent, did not give your child permission to make the App or In-App purchase. One example involves a seven year old that ran up a $400 In-App Purchase bill.

With Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies now becoming the norm within organizations, unauthorized App and In-App Purchases occurring on your employee’s smartphones and tablets is just the beginning of potentially unwanted activity involving an enterprise connected device. An unintended consequence of BYOD policies is that organizations are unwittingly allowing employee’s children to access the data contained on BYOD devices.

While children may not have malicious intent, they can expose your company to additional threat vectors that your employees may not typically expose enterprise and customer data to. For example, you provide information security awareness training so your employees understand that not all Apps found in an App Store or App market place can be trusted. But what about the employee’s children that can (and do!) download everything and anything because it just may be the next Angry Birds? We have seen Apps that are designed to obtain access to and remove data from a smartphone.

From a technical perspective, one solution to other individuals beside an employee having access to a BYOD sanctioned smartphone would be for an organization to deploy a Mobile Device Management (MDM) solution that includes the capability to sandbox (or isolate and protect) corporate data from personal data. Several products exist on the market today that includes such a capability. Other products are also available that provide sandbox environments that do not fit into the general MDM category, one example being RoverApps. RoverApps allows employees to leverage BYOD devices, while providing a secure means for the enterprise to deploy and manage Apps while ensuring the sensitive information related to the specific App and related back-end enterprise system is secured.

And what about teaching your children appropriate use of today’s technology, such as iPhones, Android devices, iPads, tablets, and gaming systems? In 2007 I started the 501c3 non-profit Savvy Cyber Kids to create educational materials for parents and teachers to utilize to teach their young children (ages 3 & up) safety and appropriate use before kids use the technology of today. So snuggle-up with you children and read The Savvy Cyber Kids at Home: The Family Gets a Computer and The Savvy Cyber Kids at Home: The Defeat of the Cyber Bully. Give your kids the head-start in today’s world you know they deserve. And don’t forget to get a copy for your child’s preschool or Prep-K classroom.

So, while you may not need to be as worried about your employee’s parents having free reign over an enterprise-connected smartphone or tablet, you do need to consider the impact of their children’s access to organizational and customer related data on a BYOD device.

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Bet the FarmVille: How Facebook games are like casinos

Playing a game on Facebook from the comfort of your living room couldn't be any further away from the loud, smoky casinos of Las Vegas or Atlantic City. But scratch that surface a little and you'll find that, aside from the complimentary cocktails, the two are virtually identical.

Both are designed to keep you sitting there playing, unaware of the passing hours. Both attract millions of visitors per year.

And both rely heavily on a small percentage of those visitors to make up the majority of their income.

In casino speak, the big spenders are called ‘whales'. It's a term social game developers use internally as well, but certainly not one they ever let their customers hear them utter. A whale, in either circumstance, is a player who spends regularly and happily. And without them, both organizations would drown.

Video, Ben Halpert Presents - Cyber Threats: Teach Your Kids
How to Defend Themselves

A follow-up to his informative class, "Cyber Threats: Our Children are Targets, Know What They're Up Against" Ben Halpert will delve into what you as a parent or other adult caregiver can do to help the children in your life make smart decisions regarding technology use.

The Learning Annex
Inst: Ben Halpert, Savvy Cyber Kids

Ben Halpert Presents - Cyber Threats: Our Children are Targets,
Know What They're Up Against

"Today's children are growing up in a connected society. Rarely does a day go by without reports of cyber bullying, sexting, online predators, self-injury, privacy or other cyber related topics that impact our children. Learn about the threats your children are exposed to every time they pick up an iPhone, Smartphone, tablet, or other computing device."

The Learning Annex
Inst: Ben Halpert, Savvy Cyber Kids 

The secret life of kids online: What you need to know

A new report from the AAP clues parents into what their kids are really doing online. Good news: It's not all bad!

Facebook, Twitter, Shelfari, Moshi Monsters, Club Penguin, The SIMS -- the list of online games and social networking sites seems to grow longer every day. Also on the upswing: the alarming headlines about cyberbullying, sexting, and other forms of online harassment.

This ever-increasing presence of social media in kids' lives, often starting in the prepubescent years, has prompted the American Academy of Pediatrics to issue a clinical report to increase parental awareness of the sites their kids are visiting and how they work.

Parenting.com: How texting changes the way kids communicate

"The digital world is an evolving landscape that parents have to learn to navigate," says Kathleen Clarke-Pearson, M.D., an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in Chapel Hill and coauthor of the report.

Tweens in 2011 socialize more and more online, rather than at a friend's house or the mall, and even though Facebook and other sites have age limits -- technically no one under 13 is supposed to have a "page" -- 30% of parents admitted on Parenting.com that they allow their tweens to log on anyway.