In this continuing series offered to educate our readers on Office 365, we look at the benefits of the Mobile Device Management feature within Office 365:

Mobile Device Management for Office 365 can help you secure and manage mobile devices like iPhones, iPads, Androids, and Windows Phones used by licensed Office 365 users in your business in a compliant manner. You can create mobile device management policies with settings that can help control access to your Office 365 email and documents for supported mobile devices and apps. If a device is lost or stolen, you can remotely wipe the device to remove sensitive organizational information.

This is yet another huge benefit for businesses by switching legacy email servers to email in the Microsoft cloud with Office 365.  This simple MDM solution does complete compliance check  on every phone.  It ensures the phone being used is compliant with the policies you setup and customize for your organization.

Dictate and Enforce your Mobile Policies

You can dictate any number of policies on the back end, whether phones are supplied to employees, or in a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) environment (employees who want to use their own mobile phone to check company email, calendars and contacts). MDM allows you to set policies from passwords, encryption requirements, backup requirements, phone capabilities (such as blocking the ability to take screen shots), even app requirements: You can block supplied phones from downloading any additional apps to the phones.

A compliance check happens when you enroll the device, then is continually monitored.

If at anytime the phone doesn’t meet the compliance checks it can then take an action you require.  For example, if a password is entered incorrect more than 10 times, you can go so far as to completely wipe the phone.  Or perhaps you just block access to the phones Office 365 services, such as email and contacts. On the softer side, you can set MDM to take no action if a phone is out of compliance, and just alert the administrator to the issue to determine the appropriate action.

Considering Office 365? Want to learn more about Mobile Device Management and the other benefits of 365? AltiGen is a Microsoft Partner, and we will be happy to discuss with you options, whether you are just beginning to look to migrate to the cloud, or already have a solution in place and want to use it more effectively.