How CIOs should approach Millennials and mobile security

If you”re young, talented and glued to a mobile device, CIOs in Canada are ready to listen to you, based on survey results released by Samsung Canada recently.

Conducted by IDC and featuring responses from about 120 telephone interviews, Samsung said the research shows an increased emphasis on organizations using mobile technology such as smartphones, tablets and laptops as a way to attract and retain Millennial workers. This was reflected in the 55 percent of CIOs who said they are adjusting IT security policies based on employee feedback.

Samsung is using the data to position KNOX, the mobile security technology first launched with the Samsung Galaxy S4, as a strong competitor to rival BlackBerry, which has long been a mainstay in the enterprise. Despite its struggles, however, BlackBerry is hardly standing still, having announced its acquisition of SecuSmart earlier this month to deal with threats such as electronic eavesdropping and data theft.

Of course, if you take the glass half-empty perspective, that”s still 45 percent of Canadian CIOs who don”t really want to hear from employees about mobile security. There”s online slots also other IDC research that suggests overall, Canada is really lagging on enterprise mobility, which may make this less of an issue.

At its 30th anniversary celebration event a few months ago, for example, IDC presented data that showed only 37 percent of employees are actually offered bring your own device (BYOD) programs for smartphones. Even with BYOD in place, IDC Canada has also shown data that basic functionality like email is well-supported at 74 percent, while more advanced applications such as customer-relationship management and inventory management is much more nascent at 17 percent and 13 percent, respectively.

What this research leaves out, of course, is how willing Millennials are to listen to CIOs or even network administrators, who know a lot more about the impact various devices have on bandwidth, the ability to deploy or integrate enterprise applications and of course, the real complexity of mobile security threats. Kudos to all of those who told IDC they”re willing to listen, but the best CIOs will also have to work in such a way that Millenials treat the subject of mobility as a two-way dialogue.