Mobile device management (MDM) is essential in helping companies stay protected. It provides insight into how companies can control the business data accessed by mobile devices such as laptop computers, smartphones, and tablets. With mobile device management tools, organizations can implement cybersecurity practices that prevent unauthorized access to companies’ emails, network, and data.
No company wants to go through the stress of losing a work device. It can mean a compliance breach if that device has access to sensitive information. It can also enable a thief to access accounts that the device is signed in to. Unfortunately, sometimes these situations occur regardless of the employee’s efforts. The MDM tool helps ensure that the data that belongs to an organization stays protected and away from cybercriminals.
According to a survey of cybersecurity in the healthcare industry, 68% of healthcare data breaches were due to the loss or theft of mobile devices or files on them. Just 23% of breaches in this industry resulted from attacks not associated with the loss of a mobile device.
However, in this article, we’ll discuss the meaning of mobile device management and the various ways you can protect the image of your company even when you lose a company’s device.
What Is Mobile Device Management?
Mobile Device Management is integral to Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM). The essence of the MDM tool is to protect the mobile devices used within the organization. IT administrators commonly use this software to protect and enforce different work-device policies.
How does it work?
The MDM solution connects to the various endpoints in your organization through an app installed on those devices. Administrators can then gain visibility into the business areas of these devices through a centralized dashboard, even if they are employee owned.
How MDM Protects Your Company
Device Identification/ Locking Abilities
MDM protects a company with its device identification function. One good thing about protecting devices with MDM is that when a business work device goes missing or stolen, the company can choose to wipe the data remotely.
In this way, it’ll be challenging for any scammer to access the information on the device. With this, any scammer who lays on the device intending to defraud the company will be left with the option of resetting it instead of accessing sensitive data.
If there are chances that the device is recovered, the company can quickly restore the data from its backup. But this is only possible when the company or employee has kept the device properly backed up to a server or cloud system.
GPS Tracking
With the mobile device management tool, devices can be tracked. The presence of the GPS will make it easy for the company to track the stolen or missing device and pinpoint its exact location.
This can help recover a lost device or alert the police to the last location of a stolen device.
Geofencing
Geofencing is used for a couple of reasons. It is significant for marketing and sales activities. Business owners can use this function to inform customers of ongoing sales activities or introduce new products on the market. But this is not all.
Companies also use it to prevent unauthorized individuals from accessing sensitive data. If an employee is no longer working for an organization, the MDM software allows organizations to quickly revoke access to company data for their personal device.
Using geofencing policies, a company can restrict data access when a device is located outside a “safe” geographic location. For example, outside the city or in another state or country.
Data Encryption
Companies cannot control what a hacker decides to do on their device but can certainly determine whether the hacker should gain access or not. With mobile device management, it is easy for companies to prevent third parties from accessing their information.
This is made possible with a robust encryption method used on the hard drive. The data encryption will make the data unreadable to the scammers and frustrate their activities. With this feature, only authorized individuals can decrypt the data and access it using their login credentials.
Firmware password
The firmware password will not permit unauthorized boot-up from any system the company does not authorize. So, hackers cannot access the data from an unauthorized system. This can be helpful to implement for work laptops.
Remote alarm
This is a feature that is enabled by the MDM. When a device is confirmed missing or lost, the remote alarm will be triggered for cases where the device is close by. The data will be wiped if the device is not located immediately after the alarm is activated. The alarm can only go off when the authorized user unlocks it.
Improve Mobile Device Security with Carl’s Computer Care
Deploying a mobile device management application is the best way to protect your data when it can be accessed by mobile devices. Contact us at (255) 315-3498 or reach us online to learn more.