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Agility is more important to businesses than ever before. Employees are scattering across the globe, using corporate and non-corporate devices to access critical data.
While agile, remote work has greatly complicated companies’ IT infrastructures, from hardware to software to cybersecurity.
Computers and mobile devices used for business now encompass multiple brands that use different operating systems and software.
OS diversity can make it difficult to manage devices equitably. Additionally, the physical distance between employees and their jobs creates logistical issues.
Of course, mobile devices that access critical business data open massive risk if lost or stolen. With more complex cyber-attacks and more opportunities to exploit mobile workers and their unprotected networks, organizations must reinforce all devices.
Mobile Device Management (MDM) seeks to remedy all these problems, allowing a company’s IT department to procure, provision, secure, and manage devices well beyond their walls. The “mobile” part of MDM is a bit of a misnomer, as MDM solutions can also manage desktops and laptops.
With the correct MDM setup, your IT team can manage every device that can access your network, no matter what operating system it uses. When implemented, functionality, security, and flexibility should be retained across your organization.
In this article, we will fully explain how MDM works, its features and advantages, as well as the different MDM solutions available to you.
If you already employ an army of mobile devices, schedule a call with us today to see how we can help manage and secure your company’s fleet.
What is MDM?
MDM allows companies to organize their fleet of devices and manage them. Managing an entire fleet of devices demands the correct software, servers, policies, and processes.
Ultimately, MDM must be a mindset that is cultivated through a culture. MDM runs on hardware and is run through software, but true MDM happens when the correct ideas and decisions are executed.
The MDM agent is a piece of software that will allow administrators to monitor and control applications, security policies, and more.
The admin can decide which third-party applications can be installed on these devices, and what devices can access business-critical data. They can also wipe the device in case it is lost, stolen, or become the entry point for a data breach.
While these features add to cybersecurity, the agility of MDM comes through the ability to deploy custom settings to each new device that is onboarded to your organization.
Once an administrator sets up a standard deployment, they can leverage the MDM server to push these settings to new devices. They can even do so over the air (OTA), so the new device is already configured when it arrives at its end user.
Once settings are deployed to all devices, the admin can monitor the devices for signs of decline in performance or security. They can even detect if a device is nearing its end of life, so they can deploy and configure a new device before a user is taken offline
In total, MDM is hardware (servers and devices), software (MDM agent and management console), policies (security, access controls), and processes (proactive monitoring). Together, they create a whole new approach to our world of remote work.
MDM and BYOD
Before moving on to the individual features and advantages of MDM, we must acknowledge its specific importance in the modern business world.
COVID-19 changed the way we work, and since many more employees began working remotely, we have only continued to change our collective mindset about remote work.
In that time, remote workers have also begun using their personal devices, connected to their personal networks to connect remotely to business data.
The use of personal devices, or Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), can reduce costs for businesses in the short term by limiting the cost of purchasing hardware or office space.
More importantly, it can create massive security vulnerabilities for companies, exposing them to potentially irreparable costs via a data breach.
Since the massive shift to remote work in 2020, cybercriminals now target mobile devices and laptops that can give them a red carpet to business-critical data.
This puts the responsibility of enforcing protective measures on the company, and it can be managed easily through a proper MDM setup.
IT admins can use the MDM console to create policies that secure apps and data. They can also use the console to maintain their workers’ privacy, separating company data into a different app without gaining access to the rest of the device.
Because of the massive liabilities opened by personal devices, we recommend avoiding them altogether. Managing personal devices on your network is a risk not worth taking, and one that can be easily mitigated through some of the features MDM provides.
Read on for more details on how MDM can procure corporately-owned devices, and deploy them securely.