MobileIron, Appthority Partner Apply BI to Mobile App Risk Management

MobileIron is adding business intelligence to analyze mobile app security and usefulness.  The new function, available due to a partnership with App risk management solutions company Appthority, gathers information about all the platform’s managed apps and their vunerabilities and puts it into the MobileIron dashboard, letting IT administrators easily consume and act on the information. Here are the details.

The partnership makes Appthority’s App Risk Management service available on MobileIron’s Applicaiton Inventory. This lets IT leverage Appthority’s static and dynamic analysis together with MobileIron’s snapshot view of all applicaitons installed across all company-managed devices. Appthority identifies all app functions in order to categorize and call out the presence of malware, privacy issues and risky behaviors, according to the companies. IT pros can view the Appthority Total Risk Score of all apps from within the MobileIron console.  All apps are also compared against Appthority’s database, providing an immediate score for already assessed apps. New apps are automatically added and run through static and dynamic tests to discover their behavior and measure their total risk, the companies said.

MobileIron Strategy Vice President Ojas Rege said in a statement that there is a dilemma with mobile apps: IT often worries about the their security, while end users find them useful.

“Appthority’s global app database allows MobileIron customers to spot downloaded apps that take risky actions, such as sharing data or not using encryption properly, so that corporate data can be protected,” he said.

The news is only the most recent from MobileIron. The company recently partnered with cloud-based application security testing company Veracode, Inc. to protect businesses from malicious mobile applications.  It also teased an upcoming mobile application management (MAM) solution that is under development behind the scenes.