Mobile device management strategy for SMBs

Mobile Device Management (MDM) has grown far beyond the basic ability to monitor company-provided devices (laptops, tablets and smartphones). What was once a simple location tracking feature has evolved into a powerful platform that not only locks down devices but also increases productivity and simplifies asset management. Today's MDM solutions walk a tight rope between business oversight and end-user freedom, effectively addressing the complex issues surrounding the management of mobile resources in a remote work era.

At its core, MDM is a command center that monitors every device in your organization. It enforces settings, protects corporate data and ensures devices meet your standards. Taking MDM to the next level not only reduces risk but also gives you control while trusting your employees. You'll be able to mitigate governance, risk and compliance issues while empowering your employees to be productive and creative.

What is an MDM strategy?

An MDM strategy is a plan for managing, securing, and optimizing mobile devices across your organization using MDM software as tool. It keeps endpoint devices in line with your business needs, protects sensitive data, and ensures they run at top performance—all while providing a great experience for users and meeting your business needs.

Why your organization needs an MDM strategy

Here’s the thing: MDM isn’t a “set it and forget it” solution. It’s an active, ongoing strategy that protects your organization from the risks of unmanaged devices while unlocking benefits like improved security, efficiency, and compliance. With the right approach, MDM becomes a powerful tool to safeguard your data, enhance your cybersecurity capabilities and keep your operations running smoothly.

Benefits of an MDM strategy

1. Risk Mitigation and security enhancement: Protect against data breaches and unauthorized access by enforcing security protocols such as encryption, remote wipe, and device authentication.
2. IT Team workload management: Automate repetitive tasks like device provisioning and policy enforcement, allowing IT teams to focus on strategic initiatives instead of manual device management.
3. Compliance and regulatory requirements: Ensure adherence to industry standards and regulations by enforcing compliance policies and providing audit-ready reporting tools.
4. Operational efficiency improvements: Streamline workflows by ensuring device management policies are consistently updated, properly configured, and seamlessly integrated into your business processes.
5. Cost reduction opportunities: Avoid expenses tied to lost or stolen devices, data breaches, and inefficiencies by centralizing device management and optimizing resource use.
6. Support for remote/hybrid work environments: Enable secure and reliable access to company resources for remote employees while maintaining control over devices and data.

Creating your strategy

Whether your MDM strategy involves bring your own device (BYOD) or corporate owned device (CYOD), the steps to successfully implement it are largely the same. In this section, we'll guide you through the essential steps to effectively implement your strategy and make the transition as smooth as possible.

Assessment steps

Before you jump in, it's essential to take a thorough look at your current situation. A good assessment can help you avoid overspending or investing in devices and solutions that don't quite fit your needs. By understanding what you have and what you truly require, you can stay within budget and make smarter choices. Plus, taking the time to listen to your employees about the devices they prefer can greatly enhance their efficiency and job satisfaction.

Here are the key steps to guide you:

1. Inventory current devices: Catalog all devices being used within your organization, including both company-owned and employee-owned equipment. This device inventory helps identify what's already in place and any potential gaps that need addressing for Multi-OS management
2. Document security requirements: Clearly define the security protocols necessary to protect your data and comply with industry regulations. This will serve as a foundation for your device policies and ensure consistency across the board.
3. Survey employee preferences: Collect feedback from your staff about their device preferences and work habits. Understanding their needs can help you choose a strategy that boosts morale and productivity.
4. Evaluate IT capabilities: Assess your IT department's capacity to support different device scenarios. Consider their expertise, resources, and the tools they have available to manage and secure devices effectively.
5. Review budget constraints: Take a close look at your financial resources to determine how much you can invest in hardware, software, support, and training. This will help you make informed decisions that align with your company's financial goals.

Developing your policy framework

Now that we’ve got a good handle on your specific needs, it's time to create policies that not only protect the devices your team uses, but also the data and your employees. A well-thought-out policy provides a solid foundation for your strategy and helps ensure everyone is on the same page.

Here's how to get started:

• What devices are allowed?: Define which devices meet your organization's security and performance standards, ensuring a consistent and compatible device environment.
  • Establish approved devices: Make a list of what devices are okay to use for work. This could include specific brands, models or device operating systems (iOS, Android, macOS, Windows or Chromebooks) that meet your security and usability requirements.
  • Define minimum standards: Define the minimum hardware and software standards devices need to have to connect to your organization's network.
• What type of security are required?: Set the technical safeguards necessary to protect company data and devices from breaches and vulnerabilities.
  • Required security: List the security features that must be installed on all devices, such as antivirus software, firewalls, and encryption apps.
  • Strong password authentication: Require strong passwords and, where possible, additional authentication methods to add extra security.
  • Keep devices, software and security up to date: Require regular software and security updates to patch vulnerabilities.
  • Remote security measures: Enable remote devices and data security capabilities if lost or stolen.
• Support: Outline the assistance employees can expect from IT, ensuring clarity on resources, response times, and troubleshooting responsibilities.
  • Level of support: Clearly explain the type of technical support the company will offer for personal and company-owned devices.
  • Response times: Establish the amount of time it typically takes IT to respond to issues, so employees know what to expect.
  • Training resources: Provide access to guides or offer training sessions to help employees troubleshoot common issues on their own.
• Data: Set clear rules around ownership, access, and retrieval of company data to protect business information and maintain trust.
  • Ownership: If you allow personal devices under a BYOD policy, clarify who owns the data stored on those devices.
  • Access: Define who has access to what data and under what circumstances.
  • Retrieval/Wipe: Establish procedures for retrieving or wiping company data from devices when an employee leaves the company or transitions to a new device.
• Privacy: Communicate how the organization will balance device management with respect for employee privacy, fostering trust and transparency.
  • Employee Privacy: Explain how the company will handle personal data on employee-owned devices.
  • Monitoring: If monitoring is necessary, explain what will be monitored and why.
  • Personal and Business Data: Encourage or require the use of separate accounts or containers to keep personal and business data separate.
• Acceptable use policies: Define what employees can do with their devices and what behaviors are prohibited to protect organizational security.
  • Work-related usage: Define what constitutes appropriate use of devices for work purposes and what is prohibited, such as downloading unauthorized apps.
  • Personal usage guidelines: Specify limitations on personal use during work hours for company-owned devices, and clarify what personal use is acceptable under BYOD or CYOD policies.
  • Prohibited actions: Explicitly ban risky behaviors such as accessing insecure networks, jailbreaking devices, or sharing work credentials.
• Types of device provisioning: Establish how devices are acquired, owned, and used to balance control, flexibility, and security. You can select or mix with different type of device provisioning (BYOD, CYOD, COBO, COPE):
  • BYOD (Bring Your Own Device): Employees use their personal devices for work. This provides flexibility but requires clear policies to ensure security and privacy.
  • CYOD (Choose Your Own Device): Employees choose from a pre-approved list of devices, ensuring compatibility with company systems while maintaining some personal choice.
  • COBO (Corporate-Owned, Business-Only): Devices are owned by the company and strictly used for work purposes, offering the highest control and security.
  • COPE (Corporate-Owned, Personally Enabled): Company-provided devices allow limited personal use, balancing security with employee flexibility.

Implementation Planning

Rolling out your new device security strategy is a critical step that requires meticulous planning. You'll want to implement it in a way that fits your budget, meets your employees' needs, and helps you achieve your business goals.

Here are the key steps to ensure a smooth and successful implementation:

• Pilot Program: Implement a pilot program to test your new policy on a small scale. Choose a representative group of employees to participate and monitor the results. This will help you identify issues and gather valuable feedback before deploying to the entire organization.
• Training: Determine what training is required to support the new strategy. Offer training sessions or provide resources to help employees learn how to use new devices or comply with new security protocols. Proper training reduces confusion and increases compliance.
• Support: Define support procedures to help employees during the transition. This could include setting up a helpdesk, creating troubleshooting guides, or designating support staff to answer questions and resolve issues. Good support reduces downtime and keeps the deployment on schedule.
• Success: Define what success looks like for your implementation. This could be measured by adoption rates, security incident reductions, or productivity increases. Tracking these metrics helps you evaluate the effectiveness of your strategy and make informed decisions about future enhancements.

Mobile device management solutions

Monitoring your devices is critical to maintaining security and productivity. That's where mobile device management software becomes invaluable. MDM’s solutions make it easy to monitor your device fleet and ensure everything runs smoothly while staying secure.

Here’s what to prioritize when evaluating MDM vendors:

• Device tracking
• Ensure the MDM provides real-time tracking of devices, including their location and usage status, geofencing capabilities, wifi connection log, and history location. This feature helps prevent loss, recover missing devices, spot unusual behavior, and maintain operational oversight.
• Remote security actions
• Look for the ability to remotely wipe, lock, or encrypt devices if they’re lost or stolen. This protects sensitive data from falling into the wrong hands and minimizes security risks.
• Inventory Management
• A robust inventory feature helps you maintain a comprehensive list of all devices, including details like model, software version, and ownership. This simplifies audits and device lifecycle management.
• Management tools
• The MDM should allow you to do a streamlined device enrollment, enforce and update security policies quickly, and offer application management capabilities.

Learn more about the top 10 MDM solutions for SMB’s

There are also other types of device management options depending on your IT environment, where you may need extra security and remote management muscle, where tools like enterprise mobility management (EMM) or unified endpoint management (UEM) may be the best choice.

How do I measure it?

Evaluating your MDM strategy's effectiveness is critical to ensuring it remains relevant and effective. To do this, you must define meaningful metrics and track relevant data. In this section, we cover key indicators and frameworks to help you measure performance, adapt to change, and show meaningful results.

We recommend monitoring the following KPIs:

• Device compliance: This KPI measures the percentage of devices that comply with your organization's security policies, configurations, and software requirements. Monitoring this metric helps you quickly identify and remediate non-compliant devices.
• Downtime: Monitoring downtime or device out-of-reach connection reduction as a KPI helps you measure the success of your MDM strategy in reducing downtime risks. A well-implemented MDM system means faster issue resolution, more timely updates, and generally smoother device performance.
• Employee adoption: This KPI tracks the percentage of employees using MDM tools and complying with its policies. High adoption rates indicate a user-friendly strategy and employees who see its value.
• Security metrics: Leverage security-focused metrics like incident response times, policy violation rates, return rates and update success rates to measure your strategy's effectiveness in protecting the organization.

Tips for maintaining a successful MDM strategy

Now that you’ve implemented your MDM strategy, it’s important to remember that the job doesn’t end here. To ensure your strategy remains effective, secure, and relevant to your organization's changing needs, it's important to monitor your devices, policies, and systems regularly. With periodic attention and updates, everything will run smoothly.

Regular maintenance

Regular maintenance is critical to keeping your MDM strategy relevant to your changing business needs and new threats. By periodically reviewing policies, security, and compliance, you can plug any weaknesses, stay up to date, and keep your organization protected and productive.

• Policy evaluation: Regularly assess how your policies are working. Are they addressing the issues you intended to solve? Update as needed.
• Security evaluation: Review your security protocols to identify outdated or incomplete measures. Update them to address new threats.
• Employee feedback: Ask employees about their experiences and pain points to identify ways to improve the strategy and make it more effective for them.
• Compliance: Verify your strategy is compliant with regulatory requirements by conducting regular audits and updating to reflect new rules and standards.

Ongoing management

An MDM strategy isn't effective without regular, hands-on management. Devices need to be kept secure, updated, and optimized to run at peak performance. From managing device lifecycles to streamlining onboarding and offboarding, regular management helps prevent issues, maintains operational efficiency, and upholds strong security standards across the organization.

• Device lifecycle management: Monitor devices from acquisition to retirement, ensuring they're updated, secure, and replaced as needed.
• Onboarding/Offboarding: Create streamlined processes for quickly adding or removing users and their devices while maintaining security and access controls.
• Security patch management and app updates: Deploy regular security patches and keep apps up to date to fix vulnerabilities and add features.
• Performance and cost monitoring: Monitor device performance and operational costs to identify ways to optimize efficiency and reduce expenses.

Continuous improvement

A great MDM strategy is one that's constantly refined. This involves monitoring metrics, addressing gaps exposed by security incidents, and training your team to handle new challenges. Regular tuning helps your MDM strategy adapt to current needs and emerging threats, making your organization more agile and resilient.

• KPIs: Monitor key performance indicators to measure success and adjust them based on your organization's changing needs and priorities.
• Security incident analysis: Review security incidents to identify weaknesses and prevent future occurrences.
• Process improvement: Look for ways to simplify processes and boost productivity to get the most out of your MDM investment.
• Process and team training: Refine processes and invest in team training to ensure your staff is equipped to handle the latest MDM demands.

Simplifying your device fleet management

Remote device management wasn't always necessary. In the past, employees tied to the office were your biggest concern with a on-premises security bubble. Today, with BYOD and the need for greater workforce mobility, employees can access your corporate network from almost anywhere. And with many using their personal devices, the security risks have increased.

A great MDM solution safeguards your organization, ensuring you stay efficient, secure, and ready for any mobility challenge. At Prey, we approach this challenge with a philosophy emphasizing simplicity without compromising security. We are not the giant gorilla tool, but we're a solution that's easy to use and packed with essential device management capabilities to help IT administrator manage device fleets of any size and be compliant without breaking the bank. Get a 14 day trial for test run or book a customized demo.

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