According to recent studies, a third of consumer data will be stored on the cloud by 2016, and eighty percent of users said they’d use a cloud if their mobile provider offered one. In other words, the cloud is big business – and it’s big business on mobile.

This plays into the “bring your own device” (BYOD) trend now gaining rapid corporate ground. Employees not only want freedom to work on their smartphone or tablet of choice, but full cloud access, even when IT protocols limit or prohibit use. Defending the company cloud here falls to IT admins, who must find a way to secure systems while managing expectations.

Get Ready

Over half of companies let workers connect their devices to business networks, and 78 percent of security professionals worry this poses a significant security risk, according to a recent Workforce article. Personal cloud services are seen as potentially insecure sinks for company data, leading some IT admins to prohibit their use if employees want in on the BYOD fun. Others take a different track with their mobile device management (MDM), allowing users to register devices with IT so long as they meet certain requirements. These may include substantive passwords, the installation of read-only tools to prevent copying data, or agreement on the part of users to have their device remotely wiped if lost or stolen.

This straightforward approach to mobile defense offers a solid starting point. Public clouds lack most standard corporate controls, and metering access (rather than outright denial) can help minimize problems. But that’s just the beginning.

You Look Familiar

It’s now possible to double up on secure use with what’s known as mobile virtualization. Data collected by Forrester Research suggests this form of mobile device control will become mainstream through 2013, and eventually overtake MDM as the preferred way for companies to handle the BYOD trend.

Mobile virtualization involves creating two or more instances on a tablet or smartphone. These instances are entirely separate, can run different operating systems, use different passwords and have different levels of access to corporate resources. This means employees can have one instance for personal use, and one for corporate access, but without any chance of accidental crossover or misuse. The limiting factor in mobile virtual instancing has thus far been power, but improvements to CPU technology have made this idea feasible on a large scale.

The mobile march forward is inexorable; companies can’t sidestep the hail of incoming devices, but can take steps to make sure access to public clouds doesn’t compromise local networks.

Doug Bonderud is a freelance writer, cloud proponent, and business technology analyst.