Oracle has introduced the Oracle Mobile Security Suite, a mobile application management (MAM) solution, which, combined with Oracle’s existing Identity and Access solutions, aims to deliver an integrated platform for managing access to all applications via desktops and laptops as well as mobile devices.
Oracle Mobile Security Suite Addresses Two Key Problems
There are two problems the new Oracle Mobile Security Suite addresses, said Amit Jasuja, senior vice president of Java and Identity Management, Oracle. The first is that as more companies allow their employees and partners to be able to use mobile devices – whether BYOD (bring your own device) or corporate-owned – they need to get beyond MDM (Mobile Device Management) which takes the sledge hammer approach and puts all interactions including personal ones through the same corporate networking environment to access policy for security and threats. “This is not the approach that customers are looking for,” said Jasuja.
The second problem is that the proliferation of security solutions is creating redundancy within customers’ own environments. “If you are a PC user and you are using your regular browser and regular applications, your organization already has identity management to deal with who gets access to which applications and providing single sign-on, and if somebody forgets their password they have self service as well as administer controlled ways of recovering your password and resetting it,” said Jasuja. “There is no need to have a complete silo of technology just to be able to manage mobile devices. Our view is that it should be an extension of your identity management stack.”
Oracle Mobile Security Suite Takes a Mobile Application Management (MAM) Approach
As a result, he said, Oracle’s new Mobile Security Suite provides a mobile application management (MAM) solution but provides it is as an extension to a customer’s existing identity management (IdM) products.
“We have taken our IdM products and essentially made all of this mobile app management capability a feature of that. We have extended the same infrastructure that you would use for your web authentication, your web directory, and your device stores - we have extended all of that for your mobile environment,” Jasuja explained. “Now, if you are an Oracle Identity Management customer, by a simple extension of your existing environment, which you use to control your web-based and your PC-based apps, now you get to do the same for your mobile apps as well.”
Rather than taking a device-centric, the new suite takes an application-oriented approach, “which is really where Oracle's strength is. We are all about apps and data.”
Oracle Mobile Security Leverages New Technology from Blitzer Mobile Acquisition
The new suite leverages new technology attained through the November, 2013,acquisition of Bitzer Mobile, a provider of mobile applications management solutions.
Image courtesy of Shutterstock