MOBILE DATA SECURITY AND YOUR TEAM
A recent white paper sought to delineate the differences between true endpoint backups and file sharing/syncing. It emphasizes that employees who share/sync too much mobile data risk exposing sensitive company information to security breaches. With ERP software offering more and more functionality with mobile apps, the concern certainly extends to all ERP-dependent manufacturers.The modern mobile world is partly to blame for such bad data habits, of course. With multiple mobile data devices and constant ease of access, today’s employee can be lulled into a false feeling of expertise while they connect their iPad to their iPhone to their shin bone and so on. But whether you’re dealing with encouraging basic back-up habits or reigning in sharing of data in & out of your ERP, combating your staff’s over-comfort with data comes down to knowing your people and training with an eye toward respect.
ERP DATA SHARING: JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN DOESN’T MEAN YOU SHOULD
Respect, in this context, goes toward gently disabusing your coworkers of their bad data security habits while not, as is often the temptation, rolling your eyes at their many assumptions. Here, IT professionals must contend with an unusual paradox when it comes to training non-IT staff: the employee surrounded by smartphones and iPads may be an expert in their field, but may not necessarily be an expert at software (either generally or specifically).The IT staff must balance the dichotomy that a business executive may know best-business practices but may not know the interface for the ERP’s business-analytics package or how easily data is stolen off a mobile device. IT professionals, experts at software generally, must fight their own assumptions about how much people should know about software generally and data security specifically. Far too often we each assume that the world knows what we know and thinks the way we think. Stopping such assumptions in their tracks can improve both data security and employee relations.We’ve mentioned before how mobile data through ERP is an amazing feature in modern ERP suites (such as our favorite, SyteLine); the ability to locate, view, and update enterprise information on-the-go can be instrumental in the success of an organization. Yet with great power comes great responsibility, and this message needs to be presented to mobile ERP users in order for their company to stay safe and secure.