Overview of Mobile Device Security thru Device Management

By Rich Campagna, Subbu Iyer, and Ashwin Krishnan from Mobile Device Security For Dummies

Now that you’ve thought about securing the mobile devices on your network from threats like viruses and malware, it’s time to plan for remotely enforcing policies for device management or security.

You get the idea. It's all about device security etiquette, about taking the simple yet often-ignored steps for protecting vital data stored on the device.

Remotely securing the devices, including taking preventive action when the devices are lost or stolen is an important component.

There are various actions you need to take when an employee reports a lost or stolen device. You should be able to do the following:

Remote lock: Remotely lock the device so nobody can log in to it.
Remote alarm: Remotely set off an alarm so that the device makes itself heard!
Remote location: Remotely find the device using its GPS capabilities.
Remote wipe: If all else fails, and if you are sure the device is lost, you should be able to wipe the device clean of all or selective data.

Protection against loss and theft is an example of securing devices remotely when corporate data is at risk of being lost on them.

Even after deploying a best-of-breed security solution for mobile devices, make sure that employee carelessness does not become the weakest link in your security implementation. Be sure to set password policies requiring a password on every mobile device, and impose an inactivity timer on every mobile device. Doing so prevents the leaking of corporate data via eavesdropping or other means when mobile devices are not sufficiently secured.