The widespread proliferation of consumerization of IT means more and more employees are bringing their own devices to the workplace for use and connectivity on the business/corporate network. The phrase “BYOD” (abbreviation for, bring your own device) has been adopted to refer to these employees. While the employees enjoy the ease and flexibility this offers, employers also enjoy the benefits of increased efficiency with reduced equipment costs. However, with this new trend comes a set of considerations for privacy, security, connectivity and management. The employees generally have different service providers, and the devices run on different operating systems. The inherent risks of BYOD policy have given rise to MDM or mobile device management solutions.
What is MDM?
MDM is a type of security software that’s used by the IT department to integrate, monitor, manage and secure the employees’ mobile devices such as tablets, laptops and smartphones, which are being used in the workplace. Depending on the type of MDM solution, the administrators can track devices, deploy software, apply browsing policies, enable access to resources, remotely wipe data from mobile devices, and more. The intent of mobile device management is to optimize the security and functionality of mobile devices within the enterprise, whilst protecting the corporate network.
How Using MDM For BYOD Helps Smaller Companies
Remote Management of Employees’ Devices
Being able to remotely manage employees’ mobile devices is one of the major benefits of MDM in smaller companies. By remotely monitoring and managing their mobile devices, you can actually guarantee the security of all the mobile devices that are connected to your business network. In addition, having remote control over the devices provides you with the ability to remotely disable or disconnect any unauthorized applications or/and users.
Enhanced Security
With workers traveling more frequently, and utilizing devices in different remote locations, security is even more of a concern. If a mobile device is misplaced or stolen, there can be very serious implications. Using mobile device management software, the administrators can easily segment the employee’s personal information from corporate data. It basically allows them to encrypt all the sensitive company information. If the device gets stolen or the employee leaves your company, all of the corporate information can be remotely removed without harming the user’s personal data.
Provides Controlled Device Updates and Data Back Ups
Making sure that the systems are up to date and patched, is a crucial component of security. Another benefit of MDM is that these updates can be centrally audited and controlled. This helps protect data along with the devices. In addition to this, when a mobile device is connected to the MDM solution, the data that’s connected to any one of the corporate applications will be automatically backed up.
This helps support business continuity measures by alleviating devices from being the single point of failure for data/information loss.
Cost Effective
BYOD can help save money for the smaller companies that need to offer these mobile devices to their workers. Some of the benefits of BYOD include, but not limited to; reduced equipment cost, increased worker satisfaction and efficiency, and reduced IT staff burden since the workers will maintain their very own equipment. These are among the reasons why smaller companies incorporate BYOD so that they only need to invest in a top-quality system.