A digital workspace is imperative for a modern-day workforce. Millennial employees have a very broad perspective of their workplace. The work environment is no longer defined by premises or timings. The new generation worker expects to work from any location, at any place, anytime, using their preferred devices, and their favorite apps or services. This is a considerable shift from the traditional workplace where employees would work within the office boundaries on devices (and or applications) chosen, controlled, maintained, and secured by the organization’s IT. Enters Unified Endpoint Management that enables employees with the flexibility to work on any device depending on the requirements and security restrictions and empowers the IT admins to manage and secure all the endpoints, corporate data, and apps from a single unified console in real-time. One thing is for sure, with time employees are going to expect more, become more productive and intelligent to depend and use technologies to get more done in less time and Unified Endpoint Management can do a lot to cater to this changing workspace situation.
A Flexible and Digital Workspace Drives the Need for Endpoint Security
Flexible and digital workspace makes employees more efficient and productive and reduces infrastructure costs. But it does come with its own perils like:
- The millennial(s) have an innate need to stay connected all the time, which makes them connect to open (sometimes unsecured) networks, which exposes their devices to numerous security threats. If these devices access corporate assets, the risk increases manifolds.
- As the devices evolve with more capabilities, the employees will utilize a diverse set of devices for work purposes, making the task of IT administration and control, more complex.
- More sophisticated services and apps tempt employees to use them, because existing IT recommended (compliant) software may not match up to the functionality offered by the cool new app, exposing the workplace to obvious, unacceptable risks.
- As organizations transform digitally, there are several management issues that need to be addressed – accessing content scattered across premises, cloud, devices, compliance across devices and platforms, accessible resources (read corporate data and services) across locations without compromising the security.
The Remedy – UEM Solution
With digital evolution, management becomes a core requirement. Following a simplified and unified approach across devices, apps, services, content, profiles, networks, etc. will help address employee issues and IT concerns.
A Unified Endpoint Management solution simplifies management of varied endpoints, streamline operations, and enforce enterprise security policies.
Let’s see how?
Unified Console
Perhaps, a primary feature, a good endpoint security solution can offer is a single management console for varied endpoints, which includes, mobile devices, printers, smart devices, laptops, desktops, different networks, etc. This eliminates the need for disparate tools to manage diverse devices.
A centralized management console can help streamline and automate a digital workspace infrastructure. This includes device enrollment, configuration, deploying security software (tools), tracking, controlling, and managing the endpoints.
A robust UEM console will make your IT team more efficient and ensure safety checks are in place, especially when employees bring multiple devices or move across locations.
Features of a ‘good’ UEM dashboard will be:
- Intuitive for quick and easy usage for your IT team and even a person with a non-technical background.
- Consolidated, comprehensive, and real-time view of the entire device inventory.
- Analytics and reporting features to glean meaningful insights on device usage and the types of devices in the ecosystem
- Easy (and/or bulk) device enrollment
Security and Compliance
Ensuring all devices comply with your enterprise security policy is a mandate. All devices that access or could possibly access your corporate data (or apps, software, etc.), should comply with the security policy, even beyond the periphery of the physical workspace.
A typical UEM solution may have the following security capabilities:
- Separate work-profiles for different employees on company-owned devices.
- App and content containerization for work and personal use.
- Total control over corporate data, for example, selective remote wipe of corporate data (leaving the personal data safe and untouched).
- Implement security policy like disable data copying from work to personal apps, password protection, detecting or removing rooted devices, data sharing restrictions, etc.
- Easy user management to dynamically manage users and apply the corporate policy to their devices.
Multiple Platform Support
A UEM solution can help create a unified workspace if it supports different devices, platforms, and operating systems. Employees prefer using devices, they are comfortable with, their favorite apps, and preferred OSes. Some are fans of iOS while others root for Android, and some swear by Windows.
A UEM solution supports popular OSes and a variety of endpoints with different hardware configuration. A powerful UEM solution will extend support to a fleet of devices with multiple platforms and will have security and management policies for all of them. This doesn’t only promote user experience but also enables the IT to gain more control and expertise over device management and security.
Scalability
Compliance can become complex when a variety of apps, services, devices, access from different locations and networks becomes extensive. UEM helps create an integrated, compliant, secure framework for a workplace to accommodate numerous possibilities that will accelerate productivity, user performance, device security in a modern workplace. UEM resolves several tensions around offering enhanced user experience and securing corporate data at the same time through its advanced security features like self-service capabilities, device tracking, containerization, policy-based data encryption and application control and so on.
User-Centric Workspace
Apart from ensuring a secure work environment, a UEM enables a user (employee) centric workplace. When an employee has the freedom to choose her device, time, and location, and she knows her privacy is not compromised even in a security compliant environment, she is likely to be motivated, productive, and efficient in her work.
The exploding variety of mobile devices and cloud services, rising user expectations and IT responsibilities and the exceeding security concerns play a huge role in influencing the nature and evolution of unified endpoint management. The boundary between personal and work is vanishing as modern workplaces are becoming more and more complex and sophisticated with the advent of latest technologies like IoT, AI, Machine Learning, Data Intelligence and so on. A dynamic UEM solution will do the usual and much more to address the agility as well as the challenges of integrating existing IT Service Management and playing nice with the Unified Communications platform and remote troubleshooting tools to drive holistic values in terms of real-time communication, quicker issue resolution, and better decision making.
