Encryption has long been a mainstay of securing mobile data, but that measure assumes that the main threat comes from the outside. Today, however, the main mobile security threat is the user, cautions John Herrema, senior vice president of corporate strategy at Good Technology, and encryption doesn't counter that threat.

"In the 'there's an app for that' world we now live in, the greatest threat comes from the 100 percent well-intentioned end-user who is simply trying to be more productive and get more work done, more quickly," Herrema writes in a post at VentureBeat. 

Mobile productivity offerings abound, and business users are flocking to them. The bad news, as Herrema points out, is that these apps are specifically built to share information with other apps and services, as well as other users. "[T]heir productivity benefits often directly or indirectly derive from the fact that they enable such sharing and replication," he writes.

For IT departments, such productivity apps complicate the data loss prevention task. What's more, the risk inherent in apps that share data is much harder to protect against than the risk of losing a device or having one stolen, Herrema warns. This new challenge will drive mobile security away from encryption solutions toward a "much more comprehensive and holistic approach to data loss prevention."

For more:
- see John Herrema's post at VentureBeat

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