Real Tech with WEI - Mobile Device Management

Chris Lessard:

Welcome Real Tech with WEI. I'm Chris Lessard, director of business development. Today we have Dave Fafel, our chief architect. And today's topic MDM, mobile device management. Dave, what is MDM and what does it mean in the workplace?

Dave Fafel:

Well, mobile device management is really the ability to start to control and push policies to get visibility into all of the devices that an organization is responsible for. So in a typical enterprise environment you've got employees running around with laptops and tablets and phones and other devices, all accessing corporate resources. And in many cases with no real security or policy around how that content or how those resources are accessed and managed and actually used out in the world.

Chris Lessard:

Got It. A recent IDG survey stated that 52% of companies are worried that their employees are not following the security policies. How can organizations wrap their arms around this?

Dave Fafel:

Well, MDMs is certainly one of the ways that they can do that. By enforcing security policies, by limiting access to specific types of data or other contents. With MDMs you can push out those policies based on user roles, user types, device types, and get your arm around who's accessing the network, who's accessing certain types of data, and then manipulate and change that as the business demands.

Chris Lessard:

Speaking of devices, Android, Apple, tablets, laptops, printers. What's included here, what's not included?

Dave Fafel:

Almost all of them are included these days. So whether it's a laptop, tablet, a phone, it doesn't matter if it's a mobile scanner in your distribution warehouse or if it's a point of sale device in a retail environment. All of those can be managed through MDMs today and there's a number of different MDMs out there to choose from are MDMs which are all encompassing, will support almost all of those environments. And then there are some which are more focused. I can think of one for instance in the Apple world. If you've got a a fleet of MacBooks in your environment, the Jamf Pro Suite of tools is Apple focused and they only support the Apple environment. However other enterprise solutions like AirWatch owned by VMware, by the way, can support almost all of the platforms that you just described.

Chris Lessard:

In today's day and age, how do companies utilize MDM to protect themselves from something like a security breach?

Dave Fafel:

Yeah, absolutely. So MDMs again, through the ability to issue a policy down to devices can can be dynamic. We can change those policies on the fly. So if we know that there is a particular vulnerability and a certain application, we can go and update that application with a patch applied to it to everybody that's under the MDM management. Additionally, if an employee leaves or if a device leaves a specific area, we can use tools like geo-fencing through the use of those policies to immediately wipe out those devices before they actually leave the network or leave the environment that they're not supposed to leave.

Chris Lessard:

Great. And how does an organization start to understand whether or not their environment is ready for that framework?

Dave Fafel:

Well, you really have to ask yourself, how are you controlling access to content, access to the network, and what devices are prevalent in your environment? Almost every organization these days has users who are using their own devices, corporate issued devices. And so understanding how you want access to the network, access to content to be controlled and managed is the first step.

Chris Lessard:

Great. Thanks Dave for joining us today. That's been Real Tech with WEI. We'll see you next time.