MDM stands for Mobile Device Management, which describes the process of administering, monitoring, managing, and securing mobile devices (smartphones, laptops, tablets, printers, etc.) across an enterprise.
In its simplest form, MDM is a way to ensure productivity for your employees while keeping them compliant with the corporate policies you set for mobile devices. The mobile device management software can be cloud-based or on-premise and performs as a key factor in your enterprise mobility management (EMM) by providing end-to-end security.
How Does It Work?
Once an enterprise’s devices are set up with an MDM solution, it allows IT departments to remotely manage mobile devices across an enterprise in real-time. The software, also called an MDM server, sends the commands out to all mobile endpoints over the air (OTA) through the APIs that have been built into the devices.
Thus, the IT admins can easily use the MDM server’s management console to configure, secure, and monitor managed devices. This includes enabling and prohibiting certain functionalities or applications for endusers, the enforcement of authentication verification steps, and more.
Benefits
Data Security
The main benefit of a mobile device management system is data security. Device management primarily deals with securing corporate documents, data segregation, enforcing corporate policies, securing emails, and integration of mobile devices.
Control Across Device Types, Operating Systems & More
This type of mobile management solution also provides convenience to enterprises, across many different industries. The software is not just for mobile phones, tablets, and laptops – they also provide management for mobile printers, kiosks, and point of sale devices to name a few – as the industry is shifting to a more general device management regardless of the mobile environment. It can usually run across multiple operating systems, such as Apple iOS, Android, Microsoft, and more. This makes it easy for an enterprise to manage both corporate and personally-owned devices that access corporate data.
At the foundation of a secure mobile environment is the company’s MDM service. In today’s society, it is not only company-owned devices that need to be managed and secured from external and internal threats. Today’s employees almost expect to be able to use their own mobile devices for certain job duties. With employees using their own mobile devices, the term BYOD is used to describe this in a corporate environment. BYOD stands for Bring Your Own Device. MDM services and solutions need to be able to manage both company-owned and employee-owned devices that connect to the enterprise.
Policy Enforcement
As employers and employees have vastly different expectations on what type of restrictions their personal devices should have, an automated and managed mobile policy is a must to reduce business risks and support costs. MDM software simplifies the management of your devices by automatically configuring devices with the policies you set forth.
Security For Lost & Stolen Devices
With an EMM solution utilizing MDM, you also can protect your business from other significant threats like a lost device or an ex-employee taking a device after they are no longer employed.
Some solutions are able to not only locate any device in the system but also wipe the device remotely or lock it remotely, protecting the data. One automated process to help protect a company’s mobile device from theft or loss is to set up geofencing so that the device only works within a certain range from its specified location, and even time restricted access for additional security.
MDM Software Solutions
MDM enrollment of all corporate and employee devices might not seem like a big task, but without automation it often ends in an unsecured and extremely difficult to manage mobile policy.
The most essential part of choosing a solution is ensuring it’s the right one for your business needs and that it’s set up correctly. Learn how Peak Technologies’ team of experienced engineers can help build and configure the right MDM solution for your enterprise.
