Using mobile device management to stay cyber secure

Keeping your team and clients’ data safe is a key component of cyber security. Although hackers can gain access to your data in a variety of ways, one weak point may be the individual devices used by your team. Securing the devices your staff use to access your systems, record the care they deliver or work from home is key when it comes to keeping your care service cyber secure.

What is mobile device management (MDM)?

If your team uses personal devices to access your systems, you don’t know if they’ve set a secure password, use anti-virus software or regularly update their operating systems. Do they store sensitive information on their local drive and what will happen if their device is lost or stolen?

A mobile device management (MDM) solution allows you to remotely keep track of and safeguard your employees' devices like laptops, mobile phones and tablets via third-party software.

By setting your team up on company-owned devices, you can combat all of the above problems and can have full control of security protocols they adhere to – keeping everyone’s data cyber secure.

MDM for laptops and PCs

One of the most popular and easy-to-implement MDM solutions is Microsoft Intune (an add-on to Office 365). Once you’ve set your care service up on Intune and purchased a license for each team member, your staff can log into their laptops or computers using their corporate login credentials (this can be as easy as the details they use to log into their email accounts).

Once each device has been enrolled into your MDM, they become managed devices. You, or your IT admin, will be able to see each device registered in your Intune dashboard.

You can then implement the policies set up in your IT security policy remotely.

This will allow you to:

• Push applications to the device (such as anti-virus software)
• Enforce security updates for all applications
• Blacklist non-approved applications
• Enforce a password policy and other security measures
• Remotely wipe the machine if it gets lost or stolen
• Produce reports to show which users are compliant with your IT security policy.

MDM for mobiles and tablets

Your team might also use their mobile phones and iPads to access their work email or other business apps. This is another weak spot where hackers could steal your clients’ data. How do you enforce a password policy on your teams’ mobile devices? And how do you ensure that users don’t download unapproved apps or that their devices aren’t open to external threats?

Samsung Knox is a great example of an easy-to-implement MDM for mobile devices. Although Knox is specifically designed for Samsung devices, it also works with a number of other Android and Apple iOS devices.

Devices are enrolled into the MDM when your staff enter their user details, alternatively, devices can be bulk enrolled.

Enabling MDM on mobile devices means you can:

• Only allow pre-approved apps to be installed on the device
• Geofence devices so they are only usable in a defined location determined by GPS
• Block users from factory resetting the device
• Track the device and either lock or reset it if it’s lost or stolen
• Disable the camera
• Only allow connection to specified or secured WiFi networks.

Another way to help keep your company devices cyber secure is by switching on “Kiosk mode” on Android devices. This completely locks down a device so that system apps are hidden and the user can only access pre-approved apps. This means staff can’t store personal data that could be stolen from the device.

Start using MDM

For more information on securing your devices with MDM, get in touch with our partners, Klyk. They help companies  reduce their CO₂ impact from buying new devices and reduce electronic waste (e-waste) going to landfill, by supplying refurbished tech, repairing faulty devices and recycling legacy technology.