Symantec Adds 4 Tools To Mobility Management Suite

Symantec Tuesday announced four new developer and management tools that fulfill parts of its long-term enterprise mobility management strategy.

The new tools--Mobile Application Management, Data Loss Prevention for Mobile, Certificate Intelligence Center for Mobile, and Code Signing for Android--address three of the five parts of Symantec's long-term strategy.

Mobile Device Management (MDM) systems are becoming common in enterprises, but they aren't the answer to many security problems. Some security problems need to be managed at the application level, and so the hot area of mobile security is Mobile App Management (MAM). One Symantec approach to this problem, its Mobile App Management product, which will be available in May, is the Nukona technology that Symantec recently bought. In-house apps are wrapped with management code that allows administrators to set policies that, for example, restrict the network connections of the app or force it to use strong authentication.

The second tool is Symantec Data Loss Prevention for Mobile, which (like other data-loss prevention solutions) monitors communications on a device to watch for the "exfiltration" of sensitive or proprietary data. Symantec's DLP for Mobile is a re-branding of its existing DLP for Tablets, which supports the iPad. DLP for Mobile adds iPhone support and will be available late summer. Android support will follow.

Symantec Code Signing for Android will be available later this month. Code signing, which is used by most commercial software and all iOS and Android apps available in stores, gives a system a trusted method to ensure that a program was in fact created by the organization that purports to be its creator and has not been modified since. Symantec Code Signing for Android is a code-signing infrastructure for in-house Android development and a root certificate authority. This allows an organization to sign apps and verify them all without outside services.

Finally, Symantec Certificate Intelligence Center for Mobile also will be available in May. This product is a secure cloud-based service that discovers, tracks, and manages SSL certificates on networks. Keeping certificates correct and fresh is important for strong authentication of devices and users on the network.