Today’s mobile workers are often more than willing to use personal devices to get work done, and that can mean significant savings for their employers. Not only can IT spending on devices go down, but productivity can go up.
The downside, of course, can be security. IT managers can get very nervous when devices and apps they cannot control become part of their networks. They may feel that allowing user devices onto virtual private networks is like giving away the keys to the kingdom. But without this access, users may be unable to access enterprise mobile apps on their personal devices.
One solution can be giving employees only what they need from the network. This can be accomplished through the use of micro-VPNs, virtual private networks that are specific to an application instead of a device. In the past, IT managers installed virtual private network (VPN) clients on user devices, giving those devices access to the corporate network (and potentially introducing unknown apps from that device to the network.) A micro-VPN takes the virtual private network client from the device to the application.
“The big development that’s picking up a lot of steam in our space is the concept of a micro VPN,” said Scott Lehman, enterprise account executive at AirWatch. “A company doesn’t have to deploy a full-scale VPN client to each device. They can enable applications and access to content using micro VPNs that automatically start behind the scenes. The user is not even aware of them. And it provides seamless access to that corporate content without having to do a full-scale VPN on the device.”
Citrix describes its micro VPN as “security wrapper” built around an enterprise app on a mobile device. The micro VPN enforces mobile control policies, and tells the app how to connect to the corporate network. The app and the corporate network can see one another but the rest of the device is not visible to the network. Also, the user cannot access corporate resources from other, non-enterprise apps.
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