BYOD
Smartphones and tablets are now a vital tool for any modern businessman. Many of us cannot imagine life without a mobile assistant which stores our contacts, messages, photos and documents. Convenient devices that are always at hand allow us to stay in touch 24/7 and be able to tackle personal and business tasks. However, many companies forbid their employees to use personal devices for work. Why? Well, it’s essentially an issue of business security.
First, companies are keen to prevent data leaks. For example, if a mobile device is lost or stolen, all the information stored in its memory, including corporate data, can fall into the wrong hands. We must not underestimate the danger of infection either – over the last two years we have witnessed explosive growth in the number of threats for Android, one of the most popular mobile operating systems. An infected smartphone or tablet can harvest a rich booty for cybercriminals: logins and passwords for the company’s email server and the owner’s address book. A single infection can herald a successful cyberattack which harms the entire organization – perhaps resulting in the collapse of IT infrastructure, the theft of customers’ personal and financial data and, last but not least, serious damage to the company’s reputation.
The above is true for corporate mobile devices – company-owned smartphones and tablets also need reliable protection. Different companies do it in different ways: some go to extremes and prohibit the use of personal devices for work, others, on the contrary, do not even try to control what devices are connected to the corporate IT infrastructure. Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions and technologies can help to regulate the mobile devices used in the company’s network. IT professionals can remotely monitor the status of personal and corporate mobile devices to manage their protection, encrypt stored data, and even delete sensitive information if the device is lost or stolen.
The benefits are obvious, and yet few companies have taken advantage of MDM. A 2012 survey by B2B International found that just 28% of companies worldwide have fully implemented MDM solutions, while a further 29% have partially applied it. That halfway house is little better than no implementation at all – it generates a false sense of security when, in fact, corporate data may still be vulnerable.
Kaspersky Mobile Device Management can turn that false sense of security into truly reliable protection. It provides the company’s IT specialists with information about the activity of all mobile devices connected to the local corporate network, monitors their compliance with corporate security policies and also helps to remotely configure protection on a separate device or group of devices. Kaspersky Endpoint Security 10 for Mobile Devices is especially designed to protect smartphones and tablets. This solution includes Kaspersky Lab’s renowned anti-malware and anti-spam technologies, a ‘Find’ function which gives the approximate location of a lost or stolen device, data encryption – pretty much all the necessary tools to protect against cyberthreats and cybercriminals. Since Kaspersky Mobile Device Management is part of our latest Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Business platform, the protection of mobile devices can now be coordinated from the centralized administration console Kaspersky Security Center which is used to manage protection of company workstations and servers.
Further reading: Mobile Device Management Technologies whitepaper
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