Walking the corridors of any organization these days reveals heads buried in all manner of smartphones and tablet PCs.  Whether employees were issued these devices by the organization’s information technology department or they went out and purchased them independently, mobile devices have become an indispensible part of the way the modern workforce functions.  However, the same devices that provide tremendous productivity benefits to employees also present a significant security risk for IT staff.

Organizations struggle with deploying consistent security controls across the wide range of mobile devices brought onto their networks that store, process and transmit sensitive information regularly.  Even the seemingly mundane tasks of requiring a passcode lock and providing remote wipe functionality become more complex in environments with many different models of device.  The mixed employee and enterprise ownership of these devices confounds the matter, muddying the details of who has responsibility for managing the security of the device and, indeed, even who may apply security controls.

Mobile device management (MDM) products seek to fill this void by allowing security administrators to gain cross-platform control of mobile devices.  They provide organizations with the ability to write security policies that are both platform and device agnostic, leaving the details of implementation to the MDM system.  Organizations deploying MDM solutions can write policies in simple language, such as “All devices must have a passcode lock protected by a passcode of at least four digits”, and let the MDM product translate that into the specific configuration language used by Apple’s iOS, Android, Blackberry and other operating systems.

MDM products also provide insight into the way these devices are used in organizations.   Administrators have the ability to monitor and control the applications installed on devices, monitor the use and transfer of corporate information between mobile devices, and enforce encryption policies for sensitive information.

Read the full white paper: Mobile Device Management