Mobile Device Management: Strategies for Smart Phones and PDAs

Posted on November 3, 2008 by Sam Conforti

 

Mobile Device Management:  Strategies for Smart Phones and PDAs

It is estimated that by the year 2011 there will be over 82 million mobile devices in the workforce.  IT departments will be tasked with providing controls over the deployment of these devices.  A good mobile device management strategy is essential to ensure that risks and costs are in control.  The payback will be increased productivity.  Lisa Phifer, vice president of Core Competence Inc., a consulting firm specializing in network security and management technology, has put together a checklist of such strategies in her whitepaper Mobile Management Checklist: 6 Essential Steps that will guide you through the entire lifecycle of such devices, from activation to retirement.

 

Previously cell phones and PDA’s were not considered deserving of IT management.  Their capabilities were limited and employees did not utilize them sufficiently to call for a Mobile Device Management (“MDM”) policy.  With the new and more powerful devices, IT is being called upon to develop and manage the smartphones of the workforce.  Phifer has provided a checklist for such a strategy.  Admittedly not all the items in this checklist are needed for every IT department and some items are slight variations of desktop management, but other items are unique to the MDM strategy.  The following is a summary of that checklist.

·         Mobile Asset Inventory: includes

·         classifications

·         maintenance

·         physical tracking

·         database integration.

·         Mobile Device Provisioning:

·         which platforms must you support

·         how will you register devices

·         how do you install the MDM on the device

·         how to configure and override factory installed defaults

·         Mobile Software Distribution:

·         which applications to bundle

·         do you push or pull software to the device

·         Mobile Security Management:

·         user authentication

·         password enforcement

·         device wipe – ability to delete data or hard reset device

·         Mobile Data Protection:  consideration must be given to

·         encryption

·         backup & restore

·         data tracking (i.e. and audit trail)

·         Monitoring and Help Desk Support:  among other things this includes

·         self-help

·         diagnostics

·         remote control

 

 

Phifer’s whitepaper contains a further detailed discussion of this checklist and developing and managing a MDM strategy.  It is well worth the time to read her discussion and suggestions.  She concludes her paper with the following:

 

“Gartner predicts that more than 70% of enterprises will implement converged management and security policies for corporate-owned and non-corporate mobile devices by 2012. Mobile devices are already proliferating at a rapid pace, both in terms of platform and ownership. The sooner you develop a mobile device management strategy to deal with this daunting but inevitable scenario, the better life will be for both your employees and your IT staff.”

 

 

 

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