The incorporation of Bring Your Own Devices (BYOD) has revolutionized business dynamics. It allows employees to use their personal digital devices to carry out business activities. The employees prefer BYOD over traditional working due to the flexibility, convenience, and ease it provides.

However, on the flip side, it brings several new challenges and security risks that must be considered properly to combat malware attacks, security breaches, APTs, and unauthorized access.

The most common reason behind these security issues is that a plethora of devices are connected to an organization’s network and are storing and processing sensitive data of corporates that are not even under the control of the organization’s IT department.

On top of that, these devices have different configurations, installed apps, and OS thereby making them vulnerable to numerous security threats.

Mobile Device Management Solutions

To address the above-mentioned security challenges, Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions can play a vital role. The MDM software enables the admin to control and manage employee devices remotely by pushing approved apps, implementing security policies, and controlling access to confidential information. The following are some of the ways by which MDM solutions can help organizations in preventing security breaches.

Security Policies

Using the MDM software console, an administrator can easily implement security policies that limit the use of mobile devices to approved tasks only. To protect sensitive data and control access, admins can implement policies to set a complex alphanumeric password of a specific length and allow two-factor authentication mechanisms.

Moreover, with the help of kiosk mode, the IT admin can lock down a mobile device to a set of approved apps while restricting all other functionalities and features. It protects a device from misuse and combats security attacks by disallowing the installation and access of unnecessary and malicious apps and web pages.

Using MDM solutions, admins can set policies to retire the device or wipe its data when an employee resigns from the organization. In this case, corporate data remains secure even after the employee lefts corporate but holds his personal device. All these policies assist organizations to reduce the attack surface and minimize the risk of a potential security breach.

Remote Wipe

MDM solution provides an opportunity to remotely wipe a device in case a mobile device gets stolen or lost. This helps in assuring that confidential data cannot be accessed by unauthorized entities. In addition, it also provides an effective strategy to develop incident response plans for ensuring protection of sensitive information.

Continuous Monitoring

Another effective approach to deal with the risks associated with BYOD devices is continuous monitoring to ensure conformance with organizational security policies and procedures.

MDM solutions provide functionality to check device usage, data accessed, visited websites, and track locations. It enables admins to set compliance standards remotely and in case device is no longer conformant with policies, an action can be taken automatically that might lock the device, limit its activities, or wipe its data depending on the situation and defined SOPs.

Segregation Between Personal and Corporate Data

Another important feature of MDM software is to create separate secure space for corporate data in the mobile device of employees. In this way, corporate data cannot be mixed with personal data that maintains privacy of employees and prevents unauthorized access as well. The employee cannot transmit or copy corporate data and paste it in personal space by any means.