Today’s mobile devices are among the latest developments in a technology evolution that started over half a century ago. It one sense, it began with those non-intelligent green screen terminals that were attached to centrally, and highly controlled mainframes.

Over the decades, terminals were replaced by more functional PCs, which took over both office and home environments. Desktops have gradually been replaced, or at least supplemented, with laptops, netbooks and, ultimately, the smartphones and tablets that have moved applications from the office to the airport, the coffee shop, and now the street.

In the meantime, this extension of the Internet has allowed data to move from data centers to cloud-based servers, but also to these roaming and often-uncontrolled mobile devices. Their lack of centralized controls is further complicated by the availability of innumerable "apps" and the ease of sharing, intended or not, of virtually unlimited amounts of information.

In short, today’s mobile devices have become the antithesis of the terminal-based mainframe world: small, omnipresent, and too often uncontrolled and insecure.