Delivering 'enterprise-style' security services to consumers

Sprint this week began offering its mobile users an added level of security, ensuring that if their device is lost they’ll be able to lock it or even wipe out its contents to ensure their private data remains secure.

The service is part of Sprint’s Total Equipment Protection program, which costs $7 per month. The app – which works on Android and Blackberry devices – lets users log on to a Web interface and perform a variety of tasks: locate the device by sounding an alarm; view a map that shows its recent locations; remotely lock the phone; erase, backup or manage contacts and other data.

It’s a slick application, and one that AT&T and Verizon have rolled out in recent months as well. It’s a good example of value-added services – especially high-value security services – which network operators can deliver to pad out their ARPU (average revenue per user). Up-sell and cross-sell can be a challenge for carriers, but tell a user they can both secure and potentially recover their lost device for a few bucks a month and you’re likely to get more than a few buyers.

Sprint’s service illustrates another trend as well: the opportunity for service providers to deliver services to their consumer customers that they might be used to – and even expect – when they are at work. In the case of remote recover-and-wipe services for mobile devices, such capabilities in many instances started in the corporate IT department, where recovering a missing device was not only a convenience but a necessity to protect enterprise secrets and assets.

The challenge in delivering such services to individual consumers, of course, is that it is the consumer – and not a tech-savvy IT department – that has to administer and ultimately use the service. That means making apps easy to download and use and user interfaces a cinch to navigate through to get the job done.

Ease-of-use is even more challenging in the security area, where so much is at stake and knowing the right steps to take – how to set up a “personal” security policy, for instance, or the steps to take to remotely wipe a device – can be complex. But the service provider that gets such services right will not only have a nice revenue-producing service but one that will keep customers happy and loyal as well.