ARE YOUR MOBILE DEVICES SAFE?
Brian Baker
Everything to control and optimize your fundraising. When you need it. As often as you need it.
Mobile Device Management
Posted in blog, News, Security Share
As the COVID-19 outbreak continues to impact industries throughout the world, invest advisory and accounting firms have enabled employees to work remotely. While working from home may be nothing new to some, the realities of COVID have forced organizations to shift to a full-on work from home model, in order to flatten the curve.
Working from home increases the risk of a compliance deficiency–failure to protect a company’s sensitive data.
While companies have instituted a wide array of countermeasures to combat these potential issues, we believe a firm must utilize a mobile device manager (or MDM). MDMs enable IT managers and directors to include which devices can be used for business purposes (email, file/folder management, downloads, etc). These supervision and security tools add an additional layer of protection against potential compliance violations.
WHY MDM?
The importance of approved devices has always been a foundation of a firm’s mobile device policy; however, it becomes even more vital as employees (that usually work in office) are now working from home.
Regardless if a firm provided devices during the initial outbreak or has instituted a BYOD (bring your own device) model, these expedient responses may create undue risk if the device is not managed by the firm.
Firms generally turn to MDM solutions for three key reasons:
- MDM gives them better control over all of the companies’ portable Windows and Mac devices (regardless if the device is firm provided or user provided)
- MDM gives them control over mobile accessibility
- Meeting SEC guidance for cyber security
Mobile device management applications and programs are the best tool for a firm’s compliance department to contain the risks associated with mobile devices used for business purposes. This is especially important because firms can now approve specific messaging systems or limit communication to email accounts to ensure compliance.
Recently, the Securities and Exchange Commission site MDMs as a best practice which can help manage the cyber security risks associated with mobile devices. MDMs ensure that antivirus software is used and up to date. MDMs can collectively stop mobile devices from being infected with/transmitting Trojans and malware just like desktops or laptops.
The MDM solution that you choose for your business should depend on a number of factors which include (and are not limited to): access controls, device types and how user-friendly the solution is for your system administrator/IT Team to set up and maintain.
The main goal of any MDM or cyber-security solution is to avoid a cyber incident. Of course, every firm should strive to be follow compliance guidelines, but the cyber threats posed by mobile devices pose a very real risk to your firm. As you move forward, the one thing you have to be honest about is your capability bandwidth–Do you and your team actually have the time to handle this for your firm?
TetherView MDM
TetherView’s Pocket Protector? uses our industry-leading end-user computing (EUC) technologies to help your team deliver and manage any application, on any device—simply and securely.
With Pocket Protector?, IT teams (or TetherView) can manage and secure all endpoints (including desktops) running any OS including: Windows 10, macOS, and Chrome OS etc. and any app—across diverse use cases and all from a single holistic platform.