Conclusion, Contributions and Future Work

Abstract

The explosion of mobile devices in the consumer space has been quite a disruptor for the mobile enterprise where corporate managed platforms are well defined, well contained and fairly secure. However, now with the emergence of the consumer mobile devices from Apple iOS and Google Android, the enterprise has been forced to make functional tradeoffs in order to maintain platform and data security. Due to the corporate security decisions, the end user gives up a significant amount of personal freedom and ease of use of their device. Enterprise security requirements like password complexity, device encryption, network restrictions and other techniques that restrict the access to information on the mobile device tends to drive users away and/or encourages users to find other less secure alternatives that will eventually compromise enterprise data and access. A number of mobile virtualization technologies have been presented here, each of them delivering specific features that focus on ensuring the security of the enterprise container and applications. Application level containers, type 1 and 2 hypervisors and the new hybrid application container architecture all lack the organic integration of enterprise & personal personas found in solutions like the emerging BlackBerry 10 Balance platform. Hypervisor technologies show promise; however, it is specific to the Android platform, has higher end hardware requirements and not likely to be seen on the iOS platform anytime soon.