"The proliferation of news stories about data breaches has been astounding," stated Chand Vyas, chairman and CEO of Mobile Armor. "On one hand, it is tragic that the real dollar costs are often outweighed by the heavy toll on an organization's credibility. On the other hand, it is ironic that these debacles could have been avoided at a fraction of the expense and effort with just a little diligence beforehand. Our top 10 resolutions will hopefully serve as a guide for CEOs, COOs, CIOs and CSOs to help them make their data unquestionably secure."

The New Year's resolutions for securing enterprise data are based on Mobile Armor's technological expertise combined with interactions with leading U.S. Department of Defense thought leaders as well as with corporate customers. Mobile Armor, an American owned, operated and developed provider of mobile data and asset protection, is encouraging network administrators to rethink their approach to data security with data encryption.

Mobile Armor's Top 10 New Year's Resolutions

1. Make sure that your security approach is data-centric, not device-centric. Your security solution should be designed to protect data, no matter what kind of device contains the data. Data can quickly travel from secured to unsecured devices.

2. Move to a central management console for all your computing and communications devices instead of juggling multiple management screens. For companies with hundreds or thousands of employees in multiple locations, no central management means a security perimeter full of holes. Multiple point solutions, each with their own console, increase the odds of errors or failure exponentially.

3. Ensure that your security application provides 32-bit, whole-disk data encryption and pre-boot authentication. Your security application should offer the option of encrypting every file on every sector of your hard drives, including deleted files, temporary files and other data at rest. You want pre-boot authentication to keep hackers outside of an operating system. A 32-bit system can communicate better over the network with a policy server, enabling security policy to be applied in real time.

4. Despite best intentions, devices get lost or stolen. Make sure that you can do a remote data wipe or lock the device from a remote location. Proper encryption of a mobile device will help protect the data in the event of a loss or theft, but the ability to wipe the data clean or lock the device from a central location gives added peace of mind that data is unavailable to anyone but the authorized user.

5. Make sure that you can secure removable media and USB devices. USB devices, such as iPods, flash drives and thumb drives, along with removable media such as CDs, DVDs and external hard drives have introduced a whole new front in the war for corporate security. Your solution should give you three options: Block the USB ports; encrypt a file/folder, or encrypt the whole USB device.

6. Make sure that your security solution is transparent yet visible so that your users don't bypass it. Transparency does not require users to do anything beyond logging in, so they don't interfere with everyday tasks or impede productivity. Visibility gives users confidence that their data is protected. And, it also serves as a deterrent to would-be hackers.

7. Ensure that your mobile devices stay in touch and stay in compliance. Your security application should ensure that mobile devices such as smartphones, PDAs and laptops stay regularly connected to the network so they can download the latest security policies. Your solution should also provide compliance and remediation features that monitor devices for compliance and automatically bring the devices back into compliance.

8. Make sure that your security application provides the logging and reporting needed to comply with data-security regulations. To comply with state and federal data security regulations, your security applications must log everything that happens within the security environment. This info should be readily retrievable in the form of standard and customized reports.

9. Move away from point solutions towards an integrated, comprehensive solution that offers encryption for wired and mobile devices, anti-virus, firewall, and VPN security. Security threats can come from many different sources. Most enterprise security solutions on the market today are still a single point solution. The problem is that a collection of even world class point solutions doesn't allow organizations to create one set of encryption and authentication policies and apply them simultaneously to a wide variety of wired and wireless devices. Look for an enterprise solution that's truly integrated --- one that offers more comprehensive protection and flexibility in a world of business mobility and newly emerging threats.

10. Future proof your organization's security. The data you're trying to protect lies in an enterprise environment that is constantly changing. For example, who worried about the vulnerability of USB devices three years ago? So, no matter what kind of devices might become popular in the future, your security solution should be flexible enough to encrypt and protect the data inside those devices. To repeat Resolution #1, your solution should be data-centric, not device-centric.

Don't let your organization become the latest entry in the national data-breach database. Take an honest look at your organization's security perimeter, and then resolve to take these 10 steps to make sure your enterprise data is unquestionably secure.

About Mobile Armor, Inc.
Privately held, Mobile Armor is a St. Louis based leading provider of Enterprise Mobile Data Security. The company develops and markets the next-generation software suite that enables dynamic organizations to fully protect their critical electronic assets. Mobile Armor is owned, operated and developed in the United States. The company's mobile data security solution is certified to meet the standards and guidelines for security set by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an agency of the United States Government. Visit www.mobilearmor.com for more information.