Why Mobile Application Management is Essential for Security

12 Feb Why Mobile Application Management is Essential for Security

Posted at 06:55h in Mobile Application Management by Simon Spencer

Mobile application management (MAM) refers to the process of managing and securing deployments of mobile applications to ensure that every app used across endpoints is safe and secure. By implementing it into your organisation, you can protect those parts of your organisation and ensure that your business is protected for the future.

In this article, we’re going to go over the basics and essentials of mobile application management, as well as how you can get started with implementing it into your organisation effectively.

What is Mobile Application Management?

Mobile application management (MAM) refers to the suite of tools that IT teams can use to manage, deploy and update mobile apps across a wide range of end user devices, including smartphones, tablets and wearables.

It allows administrators to apply policy rules to mobile applications, and configure app settings remotely. This means that no security flaw will slip through the cracks through a rogue or unprotected application.

MAM solutions focus on controlling the access and usage of specific applications rather than managing the whole device itself, as a Mobile Device Management (MDM) system would do.

There are a few key aspects to Mobile Application Management —

App Distribution: Using MAM, you’re able to distribute trusted and necessary applications to all of your users’ devices.
App Security: An important use for MAM is introducing and implementing security measures to protect data within applications, using encryption and VPNs to ensure data can’t leak or be breached.
App Configuration: With MAM, you can configure applications remotely, meaning that you can set specific parameters and policies to ensure that a good standard of security remains.
App Analytics: Tracking app usage and performance to understand how your organisation uses different tools is a great benefit of MAM.
App Updates: Patches and updates mean that security vulnerabilities get patched up, and so the ability that MAM provides to remotely update applications and maintain them is vital for good security.
App Retirement: If an application is no longer suitable or required, or provides a security risk, MAM lets you remove those applications remotely with ease.

Why is Mobile Application Management Important?

Mobile application management is essential for security within your organisation. In the modern age, the world runs on mobile applications — meaning that ensuring that the applications in your organisation are used in a manner that doesn’t compromise your organisation’s security is incredibly important.

There are several reasons as to why organisations should consider MAM vital to their security considerations —

Data Protection: MAM lets you protect your organisation’s data by enforcing security policies to prevent leakage and unauthorised access. By having the control that MAM gives you, you can ensure that your data is protected on all fronts.
Device Independence: Where Mobile Device Management (MDM) manages the whole device in a more intrusive manner, MAM lets you simply control the applications instead of the whole device — letting you secure data even on employee-owned or non-corporate devices.
Application Restrictions: Whitelisting and blacklisting applications will let you ensure that only trusted applications are utilised within your organisation.
Remote Management: Being able to remotely manage your organisation’s mobile applications means that you can ensure that they’re managed no matter where the device is located.
Compliance Requirements: Due to compliance regulations in lots of different industries, ensuring that your security is tight and effective is vital to ensure that you don’t fall in breach of these regulations.
Application Vulnerability Management: Using a MAM solution, you can monitor and address any vulnerabilities in applications and patch them before they can be exploited by attackers.

Because of all of these, it’s vital to ensure that you have a strong MAM strategy in place to control your organisation’s application usage.

How to Implement Mobile Application Management Effectively

While MAM is incredibly important, implementing it into your organisation correctly and effectively is also vital.

Here are the key steps that you’ll need to take when implementing MAM to ensure that you get the most out of it within your organisation —

Assess Your Needs and Goals: By understanding your organisation’s needs and goals, you can focus on meeting the objectives that you truly need to achieve regarding mobile application usage and control.
Choose the Best MAM Solution: Ensuring that your organisation has a high level of protection is vital, so choosing the best MAM solution for your organisation is incredibly important to ensure that you get the best service for you. Do research and make sure you make the right choice.
- Microsoft Intune provides a useful blend between application management and controlling endpoints (such as mobile devices). It hooks in with existing security policies and access groups as defined in Azure Active Directory to provide a seamless experience for IT professionals.
Define Security Policies: By clearly defining and developing comprehensive security policies that you can use to outline rules and requirements within your organisation, you can ensure that your organisation has clear rules on what is acceptable regarding application usage.
Focus on App Distribution and Management: By distributing and managing applications remotely, you can set up mechanisms that make the process of distributing approved applications far easier. This includes ideas such as an enterprise app store, direct MDM installation, or simply just restricting what can be installed.
Education: Educating your users on what’s acceptable and the reasons why will ensure that everyone within your organisation knows what to do and why it should be done. This will mean fewer users will use shadow applications and try to install unauthorised applications, making the process a lot less stressful for all.
Monitoring: Monitoring your MAM implementation to track app usage and to get a holistic view of your organisation’s usage of applications will let you make more informed decisions in the future.

How We Can Help

As with any other part of your organisation, ensuring that your mobile devices are secure is vital. Mobile Application Management will allow you to easily take control of your organisation’s application usage and ensure that only approved applications are utilised within your business.

If you’re looking to get started with MAM but don’t know where to begin, reach out to us today. Our experts are here to help and will be able to ensure that you have the support that you need throughout your MAM journey.