MobileSpaces nabs $3M to keep employee’s personal data under lock and key

Your company’s IT department has the power to wipe personal data from your smartphone  — a responsibility it doesn’t want, and certainly never asked for.

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Today, a San Francisco-based startup, MobileSpaces, has pulled in $3 million in first-round funding from Accel Partners to scale its technology that can keep employee’s personal data off-limits.

“If you ever leave the enterprise, they reserve the right to your data,” said David Goldschlag (pictured, left), the company’s founder and chief executive, and the former vice president of mobile at McAfee. To prevent data disasters, it has developed a mobile workspace, which segments professional apps from personal ones.

This project has been brewing for several years. During his time at McAfee, the Internet security and virus protection provider, Goldschlag noticed that corporate IT teams were often given “too much visibility into their employees personal data.” There is a growing trend that has contributed to this problem: bring your own device (“BYOD”).

When we use devices like tablets and smartphones interchangeably in our professional and personal lives, it’s a huge headache for IT. They are under pressure to maintain centralized control over corporate data, including mobile apps and email, and to manage network security.

MobileSpace’s solution is simple. Using a UI marker (the tiny blue icon in the screenshot, left), employees can demarcate any of the applications used for work (company email, Salesforce, Yammer, and so on), thus enabling IT to safely gain access to that data.

“We are enabling the enterprise to comfortably let its apps run and coexist with personal apps,”  Goldschlag explained in an interview with VentureBeat.

To succeed, the company will need to overcome some stiff competition. Tech giant, VMware, has its own mobile virtualization offering, and there are a number of mobile device management (MDM) companies that are major players in the space. Goldschlag also counts Good Technology, a mobile security provider, as a key competitor.

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As part of the financing, Richard Wong, an Accel partner, will join the company’s board.

Mobile security image via Shutterstock