Ensuring Lost Devices Don’t Create Security Risks

As conscientious as people try to be, sometimes we lose track of our possessions — our car keys, our wallets, and of course, our mobile devices. But when the lost mobile device belongs to an organization, it transforms from an inconvenience to a serious business and financial risk.

The Big Security Risk

Bad actors looking for information can easily penetrate defenses of an organization’s data. Any mobile device in your employee’s hands becomes vulnerable to having the network hacked — either through traditional methods, where hackers use the device as a backdoor into a network, or through more insidious means: social engineering hacking.

With social engineering, hackers find sneaky ways to target a company using information they pull from a device. The hacker could email your finance department and, referencing a known campaign and using the company lexicon, request an immediate wire transfer to “support marketing efforts.”

Every business understands the massive implications of being hacked: financial costs, including regulatory fines and lost revenue; stolen intellectual property; and damaged reputation and loss of customer trust — making it critical to be able to keep track of, and control, all company-owned devices.

UEM Paired with Device Management

One way to do this is by pairing a unified endpoint management (UEM) solution with a device management program, which complement each other in a way that closes the gaps in lost-device procedures. Here’s how it works:

If an employee loses a device, it can take some time before they realize it’s lost. If a company only has a UEM, the employee alerts IT, who then alerts the UEM provider, who can then wipe the device remotely — but this can take hours or more, and time is of the essence when a device is lost.

When a UEM platform is paired with a device management program, the employee can use Tangoe’s platform-agnostic software to cut out some of the middlemen and immediately send a lost-device alert. This activates several workflows, one of which is an API that pushes to the UEM solution to fire off a device wipe.

This protects the device’s security, while other workflows initiate ancillary lost-device processes like ordering new hardware, transferring any licenses and apps associated with the lost hardware, and so on. Rather than these being separate items that need to be checked off as individual transactions, multiple workflows can be occurring instantaneously and simultaneously, through a combination of APIs and bots.

Explore Tangoe’s solutions for more information.