Sorry, but a VPN is not the only secure mobile connection
A few days ago, I had the pleasure of being involved in an interesting security discussion on Twitter. If you tuned into the middle of the conversation, it appeared to be about VPNs and whether they were a valid way of connecting to the enterprise with a mobile app.
The vagaries of the 140-character limit on Twitter, as well as having quite a few people in on the conversation, meant it took a lot of tweets to get the point across. What was interesting, though, was that on one side of the argument you had a few security guys who insisted a VPN was the only way to drive a secure network connection to the enterprise, while on the other side you had at least one security guy and a couple of mobile guys stating it wasn't the only way and certainly not always the best way.
Once you got past the "Are you crazy?" and "What have you been smoking?" comments, you could see an age-old conversation was going on. The crux of it is fought in enterprises every day, whether dealing with mobile apps or any type of apps or computing: Where does security belong in the conversation? Let's start out with my belief: Everyone has some responsibility for security, needs to have awareness, and needs to be part of the solution.
