If you’ve not already discovered the quasi-Nirvanic joy of a robust mobile device management (MDM) service, then you’re not living your best life. Take five minutes to read up on our top three benefits of MDM, and you’ll find out why MDM has been making mobile device fleets great again.
First, What’s MDM?
Excellent question. Simply put, MDM is a way of controlling and automating access to—and operation of—a remote fleet of endpoints (laptops, phones, tablets, etc.) from a central location.
Put less simply, MDM is a scrummy buffet of security, productivity, admin, and compliance tools that works quietly and effectively behind the scenes, while you get on with your day.
Second, What Are the Top 3 Benefits of MDM?
Buckle in, because here they are:
1. MDM Keeps All the Things Safe
MDM has security fitted as standard. It’s a risk mitigator, stuffed to the ears with different flavors of security features which protect your fleet in so many ways that counting them would take far too long. Things like:
Remote Lock and Data Wipe
Jodie in engineering left her device on the bus? Some bad person stole Kalpesh in marketing’s device from the exhibition stand? No problem. Your network administrator has the power to remotely lock and/or wipe the data from one, some, or all of your fleet, keeping your data unbreached and intact.Automatic Encryption
MDM automatically encrypts every device in your fleet. This means that it scrambles data into gibberish so that only people with a password (your people) or recovery key (you) can access or read it. And if, for some weird reason, a hapless user unencrypts their endpoint, your central MDM dashboard will raise the red flag.Access Control
The more people that can access your data, the less secure it is. MDM gives you the power to grant access on a permission or role basis, which means that only the right people access the right data. For example, let’s say that tomorrow you’re hiring Nita to manage your delivery logistics, and Joe to support HR. MDM makes sure that Nita is provisioned only with what she needs to do her job. She doesn’t need access to Joe’s HR data, so she doesn’t get it.
2. MDM Trains Your People
Your employees could be amazing. Or they could work their butts off doing the absolute minimum required to not get fired. We salute that. But employees are people, too, and people are pretty bad at cybersecurity. They’re tired. They’re busy. They’re impatient. Are they going to spend time running software and OS updates, saving their work properly, rebooting their devices, and using only reputable browsers and plug-ins?
That’ll be a no.
Are they going to use pet-based passwords, disable oh-so-annoying security features, accidentally share sensitive information, lend their work device to their kid for school, or use it in the free-for-all airport wifi hotspot?
Yes. Yes, they will.
The benefits of MDM don’t just make your people’s job a whole lot more streamlined, but it saves them from themselves, and you from the pit of cyberdisaster, by automating security measures and enforcing good practice. Here’s how:
Automated Onboarding
Use MDM for onboarding new hires, and they’ll love you forever. Or at least until they’ve attended their six-thousandth All-Hands meeting. MDM is the magic behind zero-touch onboarding, which gives your new hire a seamless enrollment and super-quick access to all their work software, meeting schedules and welcome emails.Keeping Work and Home Stuff Separate
If your people use their own devices for work purposes, MDM effectively holds the work data in an encrypted container, effectively securing it from leakage.Restricting Access to the Sketchy Stuff
MDM can be configured to restrict access only to authorized sites, plug-ins and apps. If your people want to play Wordle on a company device, they're gonna have to ask you nicely, using only five-letter words, to whitelist it first.Pushing Security Protocols
With MDM, you can scan your entire fleet to pick out the weak ones of the herd—those who have outdated OS or unsupported software—and push updates. MDM also forces passcodes and screenlocks, and prevents devices from accidentally connecting to unsecured wifi, such as public hotspots.
3. MDM Makes Compliance a Whole Lot Easier
You’re a grown-up business. You say “We take your privacy and security seriously,” and you actually mean it, because it’s the right thing to do. And this makes you look shiny, professional and capable.
Of course, there’s also that little matter of being forced to take compliance seriously because federal, state, or sector law tells you to. For example:
- If you work with your clients’ data in the cloud, you’ll need SOC 2.
- If you work with protected healthcare data, you’ll need HIPAA.
- If you want to keep doing business as a defense contractor in the US, you’ll now need CMMC—and that has 20 more controls than the old favorite, NIST SP 800-171.
- Take credit cards? You’ll need PCI.
- The big daddy of global standards, ISO 27001, demands a whole new level of compliance.
And, of course, if something terrible has happened—perhaps you lost client data and that means you lost credibility and sales, too—then compliance is now your priority.
Enter MDM to the rescue.
No matter which regulatory hoop you’re trying to stagger through, a robust MDM system can check a whole load of boxes in one go. Try these for size:
It’s Your Asset Register
Asset register, asset inventory, fleet sheet (our cutesy name for it)—whatever you call it, MDM provides you with a centralized, live, and interactive inventory of every endpoint in your fleet, no matter where it is in the world.
This will delight ISO 27001 auditors, as you’ll demonstrate robust compliance with Annex 8 of ISO 27001, the dreaded Asset Management domain. Here are just some examples:
- Inventory and maintenance of assets: Just by existing, your MDM service will generate an accurate, consistent, and up-to-date inventory of devices, which is what control 8.1.1 is looking for.
- Ownership of assets: Your asset inventory helps to clarify who “owns” data compliance roles, in line with 8.1.2.
- Acceptable use of assets: Your asset inventory is your acceptable use policy in action, demonstrating compliance with control 8.1.3. Wordle not allowed, then? Your inventory will snitch on who’s playing it on their device.
- Return of assets (8.1.4): It’s easy to demonstrate that you’re dealing appropriately with devices that are returned or no longer in use. When a team member leaves, their device is toggled into your spares inventory. You’re keeping control 8.1.4 happy.
- Encryption: The Magic Dust
MDM is rank with automated encryption, and this helps you comply with a whole smorgasbord of controls across several compliance regimes. For instance it supports:
- The Confidentiality and Privacy trust principles of SOC 2
- The HIPAA Security Rule: encryption is a demonstrable technical safeguard protecting electronic protected health information (ePHI)
- The Protect Cardholder Data requirement of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS)
These are just two of MDM’s many functions that will help you get a head start on compliance, for whichever regulatory framework you’re aiming.
Now, you might have guessed that MDM is so packed to bursting with benefits that we’ve had to scale it down a bit or we’ll be here way past coffee break. We’ve based our top three not just on our own superb opinion but, more importantly, on what our clients tell us they love most about it.
If the benefits of MDM is something you’d like to explore for your business, give us a call. We’re here to help.
Want to learn even more about the benefits of mobile device management? Contact us for a friendly chat now.