Simplify and secure your shared mobile device strategy
Shared mobile devices come with immense benefits, but they also introduce vulnerabilities that demand a sound mobile device security strategy. But there are tools that can help you minimize your risk and maximize your technology investment.
Mobile technology provides real-time access to key tools and information from any location at any time. This improves workflows, increases productivity, and is truly essential for keeping up today’s expected pace in any environment. Clearly, there are many benefits that come with increased use of mobile technology, but there are different approaches for how to make the most of it.
One way: a shared mobile device strategy. In a shared-device environment, end users don’t have a unique mobile device of their own – in a typical week, they’re likely to use many different devices provided by the organization. Think of nurses grabbing a phone before doing rounds, or someone in a warehouse picking up an integrated mobile scanner to check inventory.
A shared mobile approach provides the capabilities you need while reducing your initial technology investment. If done right, shared device environments also increase the control that you have over the device environment and who can access what, when.
But to ensure adoption and protect your investment, shared devices need to provide a personalized and consistent user experience that doesn’t compromise privacy, efficiency, or security. Because, as necessary as they may be, mobile devices introduce a degree of security risk that must be mitigated. A recent report on mobile security revealed that 45% of surveyed organizations reported a recent mobile-related compromise, and 73% of those incidents were described as “major.” With the global average cost of a data breach soaring to $4.35 million in 2022, and the U.S. average alone more than doubling that cost at $9.44 million, organizations need a carefully crafted security strategy to utilize shared mobile technology safely and well.
What do you need for your shared mobile device security strategy?
To ensure the right balance of efficiency and security from both IT and user perspectives, shared mobile devices must be well-controlled and easy to adopt.
Ensure trusted access
A successful mobile device security strategy needs to deploy user access and authentication tools that enable devices to be safely and effortlessly used. This includes the ability to:
- Leverage trusted digital identity with badge-tap assignment of mobile devices
- Prevent unauthorized access by locking down shared devices between users
- Enforce authentication after device lock to control access to sensitive information
- Increase visibility into user interactions with comprehensive reporting and audit logs
Streamline access and device management
Despite their advantages, shared mobile environments require IT teams to not only manage and maintain all those devices, but keep track of the devices as they continually change hands. While the cost of replacement isn’t fun, the cybersecurity risk is far greater – stolen or lost devices are involved in 41% of data breaches. To streamline the management of devices and device access, you should be able to:
- Reduce device loss by creating audit trails for who used which device when, where, and how long
- Quickly access actionable data, including the state of devices, battery health, and other critical metrics
- Automate workflows to support device management from the cloud, with features such as getting alerts when devices are missing or misplaced
- Leverage authentication workflows that are familiar to your end users, such as proximity badges
- Depersonalize devices by removing user credentials and controlling access to information whenever devices are exchanged between users
Access, untethered
Enabling secure mobile workflows that ensure easy access for users can be simple with the right tools. For more information on shared mobile device solutions that can help you ensure efficient, secure, and compliant access, visit our website.