In most modern business environments, mobile devices such as laptops have more or less replaced traditional desktops. Companies are also increasingly moving their infrastructure to the cloud, giving employees access to applications, data, and other resources from anywhere and any device. This has given businesses greater mobility and flexibility.
However, with this increased mobility and flexibility come greater cybersecurity risks and increased complexity of device management. These challenges make the adoption of Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions crucial for businesses. In this blog post, we will discuss mobile device management, its features, benefits, and how to choose an MDM for your business. So let’s begin…
What Is Mobile Device Management (MDM)?
Mobile Device Management (MDM) is a technology solution that simplifies the management and enhances the security of mobile devices such as laptops, tablets, and smartphones. MDM implementation usually consists of on-device applications and configurations as well as backend infrastructure, which can be either on-premises or cloud-based.
The main functions of MDM are:
Ensuring that each device is configured according to the organization’s policies and standards.
Updating the devices, software, and applications centrally and in a scalable manner
Ensuring that employees use applications as per the organization’s usage policy
Monitoring, tracking, and ensuring that devices perform consistently
Remotely diagnosing, troubleshooting, and securing devices.
What Are The Benefits Of MDM For Small Small And Medium Businesses?
Here are some of the key benefits of mobile device management:
1. Ease Of Management
As we mentioned earlier, one of the primary benefits of mobile device management is that it allows you to monitor and manage portable devices wherever they are. MDM makes it easy to install and configure applications, push updates, and maintain device security. This makes it a crucial tool especially for those organizations that have remote employees.
MDM solutions simplify and enhance the management of mobile devices giving them the same level of security on the move as they would get in the office. In addition, MDM solutions also allow the effective management of a large number of different devices in a consistent and scalable manner, making it easier for you to deploy, support, and facilitate end-user mobility and flexibility. By making it easy to manage a large number of mobile devices, MDM helps reduce the burden of security and device management on your IT team.
2. Bring your own device support
Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is a concept that allows employees to use their personal devices such as laptops, tablets, and smartphones for work. This is popular among startups and small businesses as it frees up capital that would otherwise be tied up in devices. However, from a security perspective, BYOD can be a nightmare for any organization. Thankfully, MDM is perfectly well suited to remotely managing different types of devices and effectively mitigates the risks arising from BYOD.
3. Better Device Updates Management
MDM enables you to control when critical updates are installed on company devices by setting local system update policies for the devices. This ensures that all devices are updated and employees don’t bypass update policies. Additionally, based on changes in company IT policy, updated regulations can be pushed out to all devices on the network ensuring conformity and seamless protection. Device update or patch management also facilitates compliance with regulatory requirements such as HIPAA patch management requirements.
4. Improved Security And Regulatory Compliance
MDM enables you to control the configuration and security settings of the mobile devices, making it easier to protect company data by applying data segregation, securing emails, securing documents on devices, and enforcing corporate policies. Therefore, MDM can play an important role in reducing business risks.
Remote management also enhances your organization’s network security by making it possible to disable users, enforce encryption, and erase sensitive information in case the device is lost or stolen. These security features make MDM an invaluable tool for those organizations that need to meet the requirements of regulatory compliance such as SOC 2.
How To Choose An MDM Solution For Your Business?
MDM solutions enable businesses to manage and secure their mobile devices through a variety of different techniques and features. Besides the access controls and security features, some of the key features of an MDM solution include:
Over-the-air (OTA) Distribution
Remote Wiping
Device Location Tracking
Diagnostics And Device Troubleshooting
Your MDM should ideally have the above features out-of-the-box. While there are a number of different MDM solutions in the market with similar capabilities, every solution differs slightly. In this section, we have listed some of the key features that you should consider before implementing an MDM solution for your organization.
1. In-house Or Outsourced Management
If you are outsourcing your IT management to a Managed Services Provider (MSP), it is very likely that they are using an MDM solution to manage the devices of all their clients. It might be easier to adopt the same solution as the MSP will already be familiar with the MDM, its features, and best practices. In addition, they may also be able to get you some special offers with respect to pricing or contract terms. On the other hand, if you are managing your IT operations in-house, you need to do your due diligence and look for a solution with features that meet your security requirements.
2. Types Of Devices
We already know that MDM solutions can manage different types of devices. This leads to a common misconception that MDM is hardware and operating system independent. Even though the MDM solution may be able to manage a wide variety of devices, it doesn’t make business sense to allow too many different devices of different make with different software on your network. You need to think not just about security but also about providing IT support for those devices.
Therefore, it is important to decide upfront the devices that will be supported on the network and based on that create a requirement for what devices your MDM solution needs to support.
3. Features Needed
MDMs nowadays come with a wide variety of functionalities including over-the-air distribution, support for mobile printers and POS devices, BYOD support, and privacy features for employee-owned devices. However, it is not likely that you will need all of the available features. Based on your business model and IT operations, support for POS devices, BYOD support, and other features may or may not be required so you shouldn’t have to splurge on an expensive MDM solution.
4. After-Sales Support
Like any other software, an MDM solution will also need technical support. Whether you go for an on-site solution or a cloud-based SaaS solution, you will need some level of support after the implementation of the MDM. If you use the services of an MSP, then you don’t have to worry about anything as they will handle all MDM-related support requirements.
However, if you will be managing the MDM solution in-house, you will need to consider the channels, i.e phone, email, or chat, and the availability, i.e. working hours of the support provided by the MDM solution provider. Since it is a matter of security, you would want 24x7 support and multichannel availability.
Mobile Device Management Solutions
Here’s a list of the most popular MDM solutions:
Conclusion
Businesses are experiencing an increase in the number of mobile devices in the workplace. While the use of mobile devices gives employees greater mobility and flexibility, it also brings with it security risks and challenges in management. Therefore, businesses need a cost-effective and practical solution for managing, monitoring, tracking, and securing their mobile devices. Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions help businesses accomplish all that and more. Not only do MDM solutions enable you to manage your entire fleet of mobile devices from a single platform, but they also offer added value to your business in the form of data security and compliance.
Are you considering implementing an MDM solution for your business? Feel free to reach out to us by clicking the button below and find out how we can help you implement mobile device management and improve your security posture.
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About The Author
Hari SubediMarketing Manager at Jones IT
Hari is an online marketing professional with a focus on content marketing. He writes on topics related to IT, Security, Small Business, and Mindfulness. He is also the founder and managing director of Girivar Kft., a business services company located in Budapest, Hungary.