Telecom Lead America: BlackBerry 7.0 OS is ahead of Apple
iOS5, Windows Phone 7.5 and Google’s Android 2.3 in meeting the demands of use
in the enterprises.
The platforms were each scored on a combination of
factors including built-in security, application security, authentication,
device wipe, device firewall, virtualisation, and many others. BlackBerry
attained the highest average score (2.89), followed by iOS (1.7), Windows Phone
(1.61) and Android (1.37).
Corporate-grade security and manageability make
BlackBerry platform the option of choice for the most stringent mobile roles,
according to the research carried out by Altimeter Group, Bloor Research and
Trend Micro.
The Apple iOS application architecture natively
provides users much protection because all applications are sand-boxed in a
common memory environment.
Security in iOS also extends to the physical attributes
of the iPhone and iPad. There are no options for adding removable storage,
which in effect provides another layer of protection for users.
Microsoft has created a reasonably robust and secure
smartphone operating system in Windows Phone. For Android there is no central
means of providing operating system updates, meaning that many users remain
unprotected from critical vulnerabilities. Though Android is available in more
recent versions (4.x), version 2.x is still the most widely deployed on
existing and new handsets.
“Against the growing, unstoppable backdrop of
consumerization and BYOD, every mobile device is a risk to business.
What is interesting in these results is that, whilst some mobile platforms have
evolved very noticeably along enterprise lines, there is still a strong
‘consumer marketing’ legacy in some quarters and this is negating some of the
progress made on the enterprise front,” said Raimund Genes, CTO at Trend Micro.
