Global financial services organization drives adoption of cloud services with MobileIron Access

At one of the world’s leading investment firms, 3,500 employees increasingly use mobile apps to connect to cloud services such as Salesforce1, Tableau, and Workday, as well as internal applications.

With employees traveling all over the world, this financial services organization needed to provide its employees with secure access to client, financial, and human resource information stored in enterprise cloud services. As employees quickly embraced the use of cloud services via mobile apps, a new set of security threats emerged, including data loss from unsecured devices and unmanaged apps.

With MobileIron Access, this financial services organization now has the option to reduce the loss of cloud data from unsecured mobile devices and unmanaged apps. In addition, for the first time, they are actually able to improve user experience while providing better security with seamless single sign-on (SSO). MobileIron Access allows employees to log into cloud services from mobile apps without a username and password. The organization expects to dramatically reduce IT tickets for new app launches and increase employee productivity through mobile adoption.

Solving the security gap and driving productivity

Prior to deploying MobileIron Access, the organization did not have a way to prevent employees from accessing Cloud applications from an unauthorized device or unmanaged app without affecting the end user experience. Also, the sign-in process had become more complicated with increased use of third-party and company-developed apps. Additionally, security, compliance, and regulation challenges are critical for financial services organizations. To project and safeguard critical client and financial information, the organization needed procedures in place not only to protect data, but also to identify and alert the organization of unauthorized access.

With MobileIron Access, the organization knows when a compromised mobile device or an unauthorized app is connecting to enterprise cloud services. It can define granular cloud access control policies based on application, IP address, identity, device posture, and other criteria. As a result, the organization can bridge the gap between mobile and cloud security and get better insight into how users are accessing enterprise cloud services.

The organization relies on MobileIron Access with MobileIron’s native app configuration capabilities to provide seamless SSO for employees. When employees log into a cloud service from a mobile device, MobileIron Access automatically pushes the server and tenant name, so no username or password prompt appears to the user. Employees easily access the mobile apps they want through seamless SSO and the organization gets the certificate-based authentication it needs to keep organization data safe.

MobileIron and customer collaboration drive success

In order to develop and implement a solution that would meet the organization’s needs, its CIO and IT team made a strong commitment to work with MobileIron’s product team and Professional Services. The implementation benefited from the guidance of Professional Services, which provided best practices early in the project, leading to an on-time and successful deployment.

The organization first launched Salesforce1 with MobileIron Access. Employees can now securely access CRM data on Salesforce1 to easily view and update investor information and stay productive while on the go. The organization expects to dramatically reduce IT tickets for new app launches by pushing configurations with MobileIron and leveraging MobileIron Access for seamless SSO. Additionally, the IT team used to spend five hours a month updating documentation. That tedious work has been eliminated because cloud apps are deployed and configured automatically when a new mobile device is on-boarded.

Securing the next line of apps

The success of the Salesforce1 app is driving the organization to launch additional third-party apps, including Workday and Tableau, as well as internal applications and websites. In addition, its business unit is working on several apps that will be able to view real-time news information and fund performance from mobile. The organization now has the confidence that this solution is meeting its cloud security challenges and that employees are happy and productive.