Tech Terminology: Mobile Device Management

Smartphones and tablets are a double-edged sword for businesses: on one hand, they are a great money saver if an employee is willing to use their own for business purposes, but this does leave your business vulnerable in a few ways. Fortunately, if the benefits are something you’re interested in, these vulnerabilities are simple enough to shore up with something called mobile device management.

Mobile Device Management in a Nutshell
Also referred to as MDM, mobile device management enables your business to allow its employees to use mobile devices to complete their work responsibilities safely, reducing many of the risks that this activity could otherwise incur.

Leveraging encryption to its benefit, MDM allows an administrator to control who can access what, based on permissions and roles.

In other words, your employees can use their devices for work without you having to worry as much about your security or data being compromised. If you have ever encountered a business that employs a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) strategy among their staff, you’ve seen a business that utilizes MDM (or at the very least, really, really should).

What MDM Allows
By implementing MDM, you could potentially see a variety of benefits, including:

• Cost Effectiveness - Naturally, the fewer devices you have to purchase to equip your organization, the smaller your investment into a mobile solution will require. If you decide to implement BYOD, an MDM policy provides the solution to many other concerns at a much lower initial cost to the business.
• Management Capabilities - In order to protect the business’ assets and network overall, MDM enables an administrator to oversee the security of an employee’s device remotely. This helps to make sure that a device doesn’t carry a threat onto the network, and to allow the administrator to see that work-related applications are installed and properly configured. On a related note, admins can also block untrustworthy apps and users, and remotely wipe lost BYOD devices to further protect the network from issues and breaches.
• Improved Compliance - Many industries have certain standards that, in order to avoid repercussions or comeuppance, its members need to comply to. MDM solutions are a key part of maintaining compliance to these standards, allowing organizations a slight break in the event of a data breach. After all, they have enough on their plate dealing with the breach itself, they don’t need regulatory stresses as well.

To learn more about how BNMC can assist you with your mobile device management, give us a call at (978) 482-2020.