How To Implement A Mobile Device Management Policy For Your Business

  Many companies are integrating mobile devices into their business infrastructure. They do this to reap the benefits of flexibility and greater productivity that these devices confer.

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If your organization belongs to this group, it should have a clear Mobile Device Management policy governing how employees use your business’s mobile devices. Even if you don’t hand them tablets or mobile phones to use, you should still define how they are to interact with your company’s resources from their devices. Perhaps you have never considered this closely. So you have questions about what Mobile Device Management (MDM) policy is, and why your organization needs it. This article sets out to answer these questions. Beyond that, it also lays out the components of an MDM plan and shows you how to implement it with a comprehensive checklist.

What Is A Mobile Device Management Policy?

Mobile Device Management Policy is simply a set of rules guiding the use of mobile technology within an organization. As a practical tool, it’s enabled by solutions provided by specialized vendors, which allow you greater control over how your staff interacts with your company’s platforms and data from their devices. The aim here is to ensure that your employees are using mobile devices correctly, and in a way that doesn’t pose a threat to your organization.

Why You Need A Mobile Device Management Policy

There are dangers associated with not clarifying how enterprise mobile devices (or workers’ own devices) should be used for work. Inadequate security measures, loose device handling, and the absence of a device approval procedure may leave a lot of room for security breaches to happen. Consider the risk from an inadequately encrypted device, for instance. A member of your team could log into your company’s platform from a mobile phone, and access customer payments data. But if their device isn’t properly encrypted, malicious actors could snoop on their activity and steal sensitive data. There’s also the potential for company resources to be used for the wrong purposes. If this isn’t checked, costs accruing from it might accumulate and hurt your organization’s bottom line.

A Company Mobile Device Management Checklist

This checklist can work as a guide to designing and implementing an MDM policy. Here’s how to ensure that mobile devices are used the right way for your business.

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Define The Device Approval Process

This is the first thing you should clarify. Be clear about what conditions should be met before a device is approved for use within your organization. What device models are you going to accommodate? Are they running on operating systems that have been updated and are considered safe for your platform? Make sure these questions are answered for all mobile devices used in your company.

Decide What Device Each Employee Needs

Perhaps some of your employees will be allowed to use their own devices. Or you could decide that everyone will use mobile devices provided by your company. There could also be differences in the type of device that workers use. Some will need a tablet; others can make do with mobile phones. Whatever your decision is, make sure each person knows what they are allowed to work with. Also, check for compliance as regularly as you consider appropriate.

Set Standards For Password Security

Weak passwords are dangerous. They give their user a false sense of security while making breaches more likely. Unfortunately, not everyone knows how grave this danger is. That’s why you should set general standards for password security. Each device user should have a password that’s complex enough to thwart attempted break-ins by malicious actors. Also, have a rule for flagging failed login attempts. You should decide how many of these attempts you will consider normal for a session, and when they should begin to count as suspicious.

Check For Updates

It’s important to update mobile software when newer versions are available. Older versions become prone to security threats, and there may be little or no support available for them. But unless there’s a clear rule about this, your workers are likely to leave off updates until the next most convenient time. You provide an incentive for them to update their applications by setting limits on the versions you will allow. This protects your device—and by extension, your data –from risks associated with late updates.

Have Your Devices Encrypted

The question shouldn’t be whether you should encrypt data on your device, but how much data you should encrypt. You may want to do this for files that you consider sensitive. But others might decide that it’s worth protecting all files on their business devices. Take the path that works best for your company.

Enable Remote Lock And Wipe 

What if devices get lost or stolen? If those devices have sensitive information on them, they could become a problem. That data could get into the wrong hands.

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You can prevent this from happening if you are able to lock and wipe those devices remotely. So if a device containing sensitive information gets lost, you can clear out all the data or lock it from another source.

Work With A Reputable Mobile Device Management Solution

Here’s where MDM technology comes in. It’s not enough to have a written MDM policy. You need a solution that supports your efforts. This solution will integrate devices into your enterprise environment, manage configurations and updates, and provide top-level security for those devices. That’s pretty much all the technology you need to get an MDM policy up and running. What’s more, you can manage it from a single point.

Final Words

It’s important to have a Mobile Device Management policy. It could save you the cost of a security problem, and the reputation management you will have to undertake in its wake. Featured Image Source: Fleet Cost And Care

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This article was first published on 23rd December 2022

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