Make sure you mobile devices are secure before loading your enterprise level data.
Photo via Flickr/Sean MacEntee

If your company is purchasing and providing mobile devices to utilize some of the great new real estate apps, security is a big consideration when mobilizing a property management workforce. Like it or not, employees are going to use corporate devices for personal use, employees will turn over, and businesses need to be able to control and manage the data they own.

Ideally, companies should be able to group data into two sections (personal and business) and allow IT to manage these groups, but not the specific data in them. This way, user privacy remains intact while the organization is still protected.

BankTech.com shared seven building blocks that property managers and owners can apply as a foundation for a secure and cost-effective mobile program when providing their employees company-owned devices:

  1. Determine which apps will be allowed and banned.
  2. Control app access by location.
  3. Establish device locking and user access control policies.
  4. Encrypt devices, shared corporate documents and email attachments.
  5. Separate business and personal information.
  6. Define policies for handling lost or stolen devices.
  7. Monitor mobile expenses.

There are a number of software providers that will streamline the above process for you, including MobileIron, a leader in enterprise mobility management. We first learned of MobileIron after one of our clients successfully deployed a mobile device program when they rolled out iPad Touches to their maintenance teams in order to use our BE Mobile app.

Through MobileIron’s Mobile Device Management solution, this client is able to restrict what apps are on the device while allowing IT to leverage existing enterprise resources such as email, content, security certificates and identity management.

Other Mobile Device Management vendors include AirWatch, FancyFon, XenMobile, and Symantec, to name a few.

If you aren’t ready to head down the “bring our own device” (BYOD) path yet and still provide mobile devices to your workforce,  controlling and protecting the data and apps with one of these services may help property owners and managers reduce support costs and alleviate business risks.

Click here to see why you need Building Engines’ mobile app on your corporate devices.