What Is Mobile Device Management (MDM)?

MDM, or Mobile Device Management, allows IT administrators to remotely control and secure mobile devices in their IT estate, such as smartphones and tablets. When it comes to asset management, mobile devices are usually a challenge due to their sheer number of them, their diversity, their mobility, and their generally closed-off nature. MDM software allows you to control mobile devices and their use when they are provisioned to users by applying software, processes, and security policies and keeping an inventory of all mobile devices.

Why Mobile Device Management?

A mobile device management tool manages the device inventory and provisioning. It applies processes and policies to protect your device’s data and applications, essentially taking care of mobile security from a device-centered approach.

Mobile devices are a diverse category. They have their operating systems, which are notoriously closed-off, creating a unique challenge for IT departments to include these devices in their more comprehensive asset management strategy. To guarantee network mobility and user flexibility (think BYOD), they still need to provide the same level of support, compliance, and security to end-users using their mobile devices as they would to users using classic workstations.

The rising popularity of MDM is down to several factors, but the most important one is, undoubtedly, the ever-increasing importance of mobile devices in the workplace. They allow your user mobility and flexibility that didn’t exist until a few years ago. It allows for an easy remote working experience, using the cloud to access corporate data.

Over the last couple of years, the use of mobile devices within corporations has increased significantly, adding another layer of complexity to your IT estate. This has made many organizations scramble to implement a mobile device management framework to guarantee security and compliance for these transient devices. MDM allows them to quickly deploy device configuration, software, apps, and corporate guidelines from a centralized tool.

With the emergence of mobile devices in the professional work-sphere came concerns about security breaches taking advantage of these newly implemented mobile devices. As they aren’t always directly accessible in the network, they are likelier to lack essential security updates and patches for apps and firmware. This makes them coveted targets for malware and hackers due to the large quantities of data that are stored and transferred on the device.

Recently, management practices for mobile devices are becoming more standardized, creating a need for tools to manage them. They must secure and protect their data while allowing employees access to essential resources.

Know Your IT

The Lansweeper Deepscan engine discovers any asset in your corporate network without installing any software on them. There’s no environment or asset Lansweeper can’t handle.

Learn how Lansweeper can benefit your bussiness

Book a live demo with our specialist to discover how Lansweeper helps you to minimize risks & optimize your IT.