Mobile Device Management, Explained

While smartphones can help businesses quite a bit, they can also be quite detrimental to their success. If you can get past the issues related to employees bringing their own devices to the workplace, then you’ll be able to save a considerable amount of time and money doling out mobile devices. However, you will need to make sure you have a mobile device management policy put in place so that you can control how those mobile endpoints interact with your business’ standing infrastructure and data.

The Basics of Mobile Device Management

Mobile Device Management, or MDM, allows your employees to use their mobile devices for work purposes, and gives you a management platform in which to control that relationship. Using encryption, MDM gives your organization’s IT administrator control over who accesses what information from their mobile devices using pre-established roles and permissions.

Businesses that have a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy generally take advantage of MDM. This basically gives your employees the freedom to use their own personal devices for work purposes and keeps your data as secure as possible while maintaining the employee's ability to use their mobile devices for productivity.

MDM’s Purpose

MDM allows for several benefits that are great for businesses looking to save money and keep their devices secure:

• Cost Effectiveness: The BYOD strategy reduces costs substantially, and the mobile device management platform is a big reason that is possible. The fewer devices you have to purchase for your employees, the less your mobile costs will be.
• Management Capabilities: MDM gives your business the ability to oversee the security of any employee device, even remotely. This can help to make sure that a device doesn’t bring a threat home to the network unknowingly. It also gives your administrators the ability to make sure work-related applications are installed and configured properly. Admins also have the power to block any distrustworthy apps or users, as well as remotely wipe any lost BYOD devices to keep them from being used to access company data.
• Improved Compliance: Some industries have specific standards that must be met in order to avoid repercussions or comeuppance. MDM solutions are all about maintaining compliance with these standards. This gives businesses an advantage if they ever encounter a data breach.

To learn more about how Computerware can help you with MDM, reach out to us at (703) 821-8200.