Every day, transportation companies move freight across municipalities, provinces, states, and international borders. The journey is carefully planned. Vehicles are tracked in real time, shipments are monitored from origin to destination, and customers expect complete visibility every step of the way.
But there's one part of the journey that often goes unnoticed.
What happens to the mobile devices travelling with your drivers, dispatchers, and field employees when they cross into a new jurisdiction?
While the vehicle may have crossed the border in seconds, the device it carries may still be operating under security policies designed for somewhere else, or worse, relying on an employee to manually activate the right protections.
As fleets become increasingly mobile, this creates an overlooked security and compliance challenge that many organisations haven't fully addressed.
A Growing Gap Between Mobility and Security
Our recent transportation industry survey asked a simple question:
When employees' mobile devices enter a new jurisdiction, what happens to their security policies?
The results were eye-opening.
- 47% said employees must manually enable security policies.
- 20% said nothing changes at all.
- Only 33% reported that policies adjust automatically.
That means 67% of transportation organisations are relying on manual processes or static policies as employees move between jurisdictions.
For an industry built on efficiency and automation, that's a surprising disconnect.
Why Manual Processes Create Unnecessary Risk
Drivers already have enough to focus on.
They're navigating unfamiliar roads, meeting delivery schedules, communicating with dispatch, complying with transportation regulations, and ensuring cargo arrives safely.
Expecting them to remember when to activate different security settings shouldn't be another responsibility on the checklist.
Even with well-trained employees, manual processes introduce risk.
Routes change.
Schedules change.
Unexpected border crossings happen.
People get distracted.
When security depends on someone remembering to take action, consistency becomes difficult and consistency is what strong security and compliance programs rely on.
Every Border Crossing Can Change the Risk Landscape
Crossing into another province, state, or country isn't simply a geographic event.
It can also introduce different privacy expectations, contractual obligations, and regulatory considerations for the data stored on a corporate device.
Whether it's customer information, internal business data, or access to corporate applications, organisations need confidence that the appropriate protections are in place regardless of where employees are working.
Border inspections, lost devices, or unexpected security requests can all create situations where sensitive corporate or customer information may be exposed. The goal isn't to expect employees to make perfect security decisions in high-pressure moments, it's to reduce the need for those decisions altogether.
What Modern Fleet Security Looks Like
Leading organisations are moving away from static security policies and manual checklists.
Instead, they're adopting location-aware security that automatically adapts as devices move between jurisdictions.
Depending on an organisation's requirements, that can include automatically:
- Applying different security policies based on location.
- Restricting access to sensitive applications or data.
- Enforcing regional compliance requirements.
- Triggering alerts or workflows for security teams.
- Creating an audit trail that demonstrates when policies were applied.
The result is a more consistent security posture without adding work for drivers or field employees.
Security Should Travel With Your Fleet
Transportation has embraced automation in routing, fleet management, and shipment tracking because those technologies improve consistency and reduce operational risk.
Mobile security should follow the same principle.
Employees shouldn't have to remember which security profile applies in every jurisdiction they enter. The technology should recognise the context and respond automatically.
As fleets become more connected and regulations continue to evolve, organisations that remove manual security processes will be better positioned to reduce risk, simplify compliance, and allow employees to focus on what they do best.
Is Your Organisation Ready?
If your fleet regularly crosses provincial, state, or international borders, now is a good time to evaluate whether your mobile security policies are keeping pace with your operations.
Our Transportation Jurisdictional Risk Review helps organisations identify potential gaps in their current approach and explores how location-aware policy enforcement can reduce manual effort while strengthening security and compliance.
Because your fleet moves every day.
Your security should move with it.