During uncertain times, businesses need to find ways to secure themselves from malicious attacks and other forms of disaster. The newfound demand for remote work which is driven by the Coronavirus Pandemic has led to a BYOD work model. In this model, many companies are allowing workers to get access to business data using their personal devices.

The Cyber Security Landscape

The cyber security dynamics around the small medium business space is different than what you find in large global enterprises. Many people have a misconception in which they believe that small to medium sized companies are immune to cyber security attacks. This is however not the case.

Small to midsized businesses are not immune to cyber attacks just because their data is any less valuable than other bigger companies. This does not mean that you have to traffic fear and lose sleep over it, but it is important to recognize that the malicious actors do not discriminate when it comes to deploying a cyber attack. They are always going to look for a place that has defenses that may be exploitable.

Many cyber criminals understand that small to midsized businesses do not have millions of dollars to spend on cyber security, and their systems are more penetrable than the others. Having a small medium sized business is very stressful. Apart from simply having to worry about cyber security, you also have worry about other elements such as payrolls, meeting customer demands and more.

When it comes to IT or cyber security, this may be something that you do not have a full staff to perform. It is worth noting that cyber security applies to small medium business regardless of the type of data you hold. If you cannot afford cyber security investments, then you will be unable to cope with data breach expenditures.

Security Concerns Caused by Mobile Devices

There are two primary threats that a business has to face with the use of mobile devices. The first is that valuable information has to leave the office premise. Not to mention, once important information is entered into a secondary device of the employ, it is no longer in the control of the business. In other words, business owners need to give up their control over their data.

Moreover, the employees and users have access to that data remotely, and thus, business servers and applications have to function away from a controlled environment. The protected and controlled environment is one that belongs to the company. In addition, as more and more workers start to use mobile devices to access business data, challenges begin to emerge on both levels, organizational, and device level.

Mobile Device Management

Organizations today are not short of mobile devices that workers are using to perform their job. These devices can range from smart phones, tablets and other devices as well. If you wish to manage these devices as a business owner, you will have to use Mobile Device Management strategies. In other words, this can be known as MDM.

This type of management becomes critical, especially when the employees are using their personal devices for work-related activities. Businesses have to install sensitive company information on the user’s device. Mobile device management allows businesses to keep track of all the activities that are occurring on your system through all the different mobile devices.

It can also enable you to monitor and manage different features and aspects of the mobile devices. For instance, you can create policies according to applications workers want to utilize. You can also pick out the type of data that is present on the device, and also where you will store the data. Overall, a strong mobile device management deployment can help businesses stay updated with all the functions performed on a mobile device.

One of the most important features of a mobile device management has to do with access control. This feature allows you to integrate a particular type of security on the mobile device. This security accounts for controlling access in a worker’s mobile when they are trying to enter important data. This access can also be controlled using an authentication protocol. In this protocol, the worker will not only have to provide credentials when to access important data, but also identify their identity.

Application Management

This is an aspect of mobile device management that can be incredible in terms of a security measure. For instance, application management allows you to manage all the applications that you find on the mobile devices. Not only that, it also allows businesses to decide the different versions of the application that they will opt for. On many of the mobile devices, the applications are updated in a timely fashion.

In a corporate environment, workers need to be careful about all the upgrades they make. All of these concerns stem from the possibility of users unintentionally installing malware applications. Many unauthorized applications are often infested with malicious software that can be damaging to your business’s database.

Therefore, application management helps businesses control the access to application downloads. One of the ways companies are able to do this is by incorporating an allow list. This allow-list is then configured into the system of a mobile device management system. This list will only allow businesses to install trusted applications in their employee’s devices.

The users will be limited to downloading the applications that are mentioned in the list. Furthermore, they can also pick out apps from the list and cannot install any that are outside of it. Businesses not only have to monitor the applications that a user is installing, but they also have to make decisions regarding the data management storage of these mobile devices.

Allow Prescient To Help!

All of the above mentioned measures are very painstaking and difficult to deploy. This is why it is better to take advantage of Prescient Solutions for this Mobile Device Management. They can act as key partners who help your businesses implement a safe and secure BYOD policy, along with a well controlled hybrid work model. Their expertise in cloud services helps cut down your costs, and boost up your performance.