Twelve Best Practices for Mobile Device Management

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Twelve Best Practices for Mobile Device Management-5

You may be worried that you’ll need a new solution to implement the first three best practices. That isn’t necessarily the case. If you have a BlackBerry Enterprise Server, then you are covered on that platform. And with Exchange or Lotus Notes, you can enforce your PIN policy and remote wipe your iPhones, iPad®s, and Windows Mobile devices. (Android™ added this Exchange-based security control in version 2.2.)

Following the three principles MaaS360 has already outlined is a responsible approach that takes advantage of existing infrastructure for device and risk management. And it’s a smart one considering that you really can’t stop people in your environment from using mobile devices.

The biggest issue with this approach is that reporting is limited and not scalable — you’ll need to develop and run reports manually, and deal with the lack of a centralized view into all devices.

But taking the first step with reporting and inventorying can dramatically improve your current posture on the uber-popular iPhone and Android devices. Then you can plan a more scalable and robust management and security solution (as described in the next best practices).

More businesses than ever are confronting how to fully embrace mobile devices beyond their executive and sales teams. In a way, IT teams are being dragged into this. Many users have fully incorporated smartphones and tablets into their daily lives thanks to devices and operating systems from Apple and Google. They are choosing the personal user experience of Android and iPhone over the largely business-task-driven BlackBerry devices. They have also adopted application stores in their personal lives, blending activities like Web browsing, games, and mobile payments with business uses such as corporate email.

Mobile Device Management (MDM) is more important than ever, so why is it taking so long for businesses to officially assimilate mobile devices into their organizations? It’s usually because they want to put an IT strategy for management and operation in place first. It’s understandable that IT would like to add a degree of rigor, but the solution doesn’t have to be that difficult.

MaaS360 has developed twelve best practices for mobile device management. The first eight principles are the essentials that every organization needs to adopt. The last four are advanced practices that will help take your organization to the next level.

Twelve Best Practices for Mobile Device Management

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