Introduction

The explosive growth in the popularity of mobile devices and growth in their powerful features has led to a sharp rise in the usage of smartphones, tablets and mobile POS devices in the corporate world.

As the market for these devices continues to develop at an exponential rate, concerns about the safety of the sensitive corporate data present on mobile device also grow proportionately as the tracking the data, relying on its integrity becomes increasingly challenging. Enforcing corporate governance, complying with local laws and trans-border regulations also pose a serious challenge in this case.

Hence a technical method to secure, monitor, manage and supports mobile devices deployed across mobile operators, service providers and enterprises is need of the hour which has led to the development of Mobile Device Management(MDM).



What is Mobile Device Management (MDM)?

Mobile Device Management (MDM) software secures, monitors, manages and supports mobile devices deployed across mobile operators, service providers and enterprises. MDM functionality typically includes over-the-air distribution of applications, data and configuration settings for all types of mobile devices. This applies to both company-owned and employee-owned (BYOD) devices across the enterprise or mobile devices owned by consumers.

The intent of MDM is to optimize the functionality and security of a mobile communications network while minimizing cost and downtime.

Why the sudden demand for managing mobile devices?

Risks associated with these devices such as sensitive corporate data going into wrong hands and dangers of facing litigation suits due to intentional/unintentional data breach or data losses suffered due to lost/misplaced device makes a ready case for managing the mobile devices. There are also legal and HR related issues that need to be ironed out if there is a case of adopting “employee-liable ownership” approach for the accountability of the devices.

An organization will still be responsible to maintain security for these mobile endpoints as per the SOX, HIPAA etc. federal mandates, but since the devices are not owned by the organization, securing the data becomes a tricky issue here as organization may or may not own the mobile device in question at the first place. Placing accountability becomes tricky in such cases.

Using Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions, organizations can partially own these devices by enforcing corporate policies and procedures to them. Hence the importance of investing in MDM solution makes sense in these situations.



Key factors to consider while shopping for MDM solution:

Assess how efficiently the MDM agent can be deployed on a new device.

Does the MDM vendor offer built-in support for malicious application scanning?

Do you have to encrypt the entire device, or the provider lets you encrypt company specific or selected files and folders?

Is there is a support for selective wipe which erases only corporate data in case a remote wipe is issued?

Is there any option for Automatic device provisioning?

Is it easy to search, custom filter and modify individual mobile endpoints for hundreds of managed mobile devices?

How we can help your organization? Strong support of Solutions Team: NII has been working in close association with leading MDM solution products. Our solution team is well trained and qualified to handle any support related queries you may have.

Currently we have actively associated our MDM partnership with MobileIron. Our team consists of certified MobileIron experts who understand each and every module of the solution and have extensive hands on experience.

Security Awareness Trainings: We conduct numerous security trainings for our clients and help them to understand the risks faced by carrying corporate data on their mobile devices. We put forward the precautions and industry best practices they need to follow for securing the sensitive information.

Social Engineering Exercises: We also conduct live sessions on social engineering exercises which demonstrate by practical examples how even a reasonably well informed person about security can be easily tipped off by cleverly crafted social engineering attacks. Having knowledge of these kind of attacks makes sure your corporate data is secure in hands of your employees.



Our Partners