- With the prevalence of mobile devices
being used To actually complete our jobs,
there is a certain risk associated with that.
Because we're now putting company data onto a device,
that device may or may not be owned
by the actual company,
and that's a bit of a problem.
So MDM comes into play here.
MDM is mobile device management,
and we see here how do we maintain
enterprise security posture on a device
that we do not control
while still giving the user the freedom they expect,
and require in order to actually complete their job?
We see a lot of bring your own device
and enterprise environments now.
As well, the company may or may not own
a whole bunch of tablets and mobile phones.
So we see the use of tablets
as well as phones in particularly,
a lot in warehouse environments.
So you take a device that has a camera on it,
that camera can scan a barcode.
Similarly, the companies that deliver
packages to your front door,
and they need to prove that the delivery was made.
They take a picture of the delivery.
There's your front door,
there's your package.
You get an email saying,
"Hey, there's your package right there.
There's proof that we delivered it."
That device and the warehouse devices,
whatever the case may be,
are most likely owned by the company.
So how do we enforce our enterprises policies
on these devices that are out and about,
as well on devices that we are allowing
to attach to our network?
So MDM exists.
MDM has a whole bunch of common features
across the majority of MDM providers.
So let's take a run through these provisioning.
A lot of these MDM platforms allow
or offer zero touch provisioning services.
Wherein, when the user opens the device,
it is already associated with one, the MDM,
and two, the actual enterprise customer.
These MDMs will then push down
some configuration to that device
as well as policy and security setting.
So how long does the pen need to be in order
to unlock the device, things like that.
They also offer backup and restore capabilities,
so that if the device is lost, no data is lost.
Similarly, remote lock and wipe.
If the device is stolen,
then the MDM can go wipe the device.
If it's online, lock it.
If it's online, provided the MDM can access it, of course.
And one of these policies
that you could configure is,
if it hasn't talked to the MDM in four days,
then wipe the device.
Logging and reporting.
So we have local logs on the device,
take those logs and send them up
to the MDM provider.
Access control, meaning you have to be an employee
of this organization to actually use the device.
We can deploy applications.
So if we need this barcode scanner
to be on all of our devices,
we can enforce that with MDM,
as well as prevent the users
from removing those applications.
We can push for more updates.
So, for example, an iPhone is going to say,
"Hey, there's a new version of iOS available.
Do you wanna install it with an MDM?"
We can take control of that
and force the installation
or stop the installation
if we don't want the user to upgrade yet,
because we haven't gone through the full QA
on whatever our enterprise applications are.
We can monitor network utilization,
see how much of our SIM data
is actually being consumed.
So we don't have extreme cell phone charges.
We can track assets as well.
So with an MDM, you could turn on the GPS
and say this device is physically located
at this latitude/longitude.
And we know where the device is.
Remotely troubleshoot, remote control, GPS tracking.
This one is particularly interesting, geofencing.
I worked with a customer one time that had,
it was a grocery store,
and they had little cell phones
that were used for the the what's the word for it,
remote shoppers.
So you go to the application,
you say I wanna buy some milk and cheese,
submit your order.
Someone in the store has to acquire those goods,
put 'em into a bag and put your name on it.
And they were using cell phones for that.
And they had a problem with people
leaving with the devices at the end of the day.
So they implemented an MDM
with a geofencing functionality
and there was an alert sent
as soon as that device crossed that fence.
Then, so as they're walking out to their car,
an alert was sent to the in store manager saying,
"Hey, one of your cell phones is leaving.
You need to go take a look at that."
Usually, there's support for iOS,
Android, and ChromeOS in these MDMs.