Peer to Peer Magazine

PEER TO PEER: THE QUARTERLY MAGA ZINE OF ILTA 44 In the old days, being on call meant providing your home phone number for an off-hours list or maybe being put into the weekly rotation to take home the on- call beeper. My, how things have changed. These days you are hard pressed to find a person who does not have a mobile device providing them constant contact. With all this convenience and connectedness, new concerns have cropped up and de facto conventions have emerged. Employees are accustomed to shouldering some or all of the cost of their devices and using them for their job, which is great for their employers and clients. Business can progress with fewer delays and more fluidity. The flipside of that coin is that the boundary of the enterprise network is now within the pockets and purses of those employees. Ensuring the protection and proper handling of the data for which the firm is responsible is an increasing challenge. THINGS USED TO BE SO SIMPLE… We can look back on the early days of modern mobile devices — the BlackBerry era — and see that things were pretty simple. Back then it was all about email, and the device landscape was homogeneous. As technology progressed and devices became more capable, the expectations of users increased. We are now at a point where the end user expects there to be little difference in capabilities provided on a phone or tablet versus a laptop or desktop computer. Mobile device management (MDM) is not just about email but about applications and access to firm data and backend systems. Modern MDM solutions must address nearly all the concerns of traditional desktop management. POLICY COMPLIANCE ENFORCEMENT What minimum state of preparedness is necessary for devices to become extended members of your firm's computing infrastructure? Common minimum criteria are full device encryption and device PIN lock codes of a specified length. Your firm might have additional criteria such as device types or minimum versions. The MDM solution you select should be able to check these criteria before enabling devices. Some solutions require devices to be configured before enablement via device- or platform-specific tools, while others have mechanisms to do this configuration work for you. FEATURES Assess Your Mobile Device Management Needs

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