Remote management of employees personal cell phones ...
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Our management team has decided that they want to end company issued cell phones and instead provide a monthly stipend for work use of personal phones. As part of that they want to to be able to protect company data on personal phones. Basically they want to wipe company data if the employee leaves the company.
My first thought is I'm not sure employees are going to want to allow the company to install anything that will control their personal devices. I know I'm not keen on the idea at the moment myself.
For those who may be in similar situation do your employees allow company control of their personal devices? What kinds of issues should I be looking at trying to protect? Email and VPN access jump immediately to mind but are there other considerations as well?
Are there any tools that others have used to accomplish this and what has the experience with them been like?
Thanks
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@BraswellJay said in Remote management of employees personal cell phones ...:
Our management team has decided that they want to end company issued cell phones and instead provide a monthly stipend for work use of personal phones. As part of that they want to to be able to protect company data on personal phones. Basically they want to wipe company data if the employee leaves the company.
Let's reword this...
Basically they said...
"We want to stop having the right to wipe devices and protect our data."
And then they said "We want to get back the thing we just gave up."
Which do they want, to not pay for the phones, or to control the data? They have to choose.
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@BraswellJay said in Remote management of employees personal cell phones ...:
My first thought is I'm not sure employees are going to want to allow the company to install anything that will control their personal devices. I know I'm not keen on the idea at the moment myself.
I would definitely not voluntarily do that. I'd just say that the company is stuck and can't contact me or ask me to use the device.
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@BraswellJay said in Remote management of employees personal cell phones ...:
For those who may be in similar situation do your employees allow company control of their personal devices?
Would you want an employee that allowed this? I wouldn't.
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Nope, company provides phones, manages them via MDM platform.
Data is connected to via SDP, which a personal device will not be allowed through.
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I believe some devices/MDM setups allow you to create an isolated space on an employee owned device. You then control that isolated space not the whole device. When the employee leaves that controlled bit can be removed without wiping the device.
No idea how effective/reliable/manageable any of that is since I've not implemented or supported that style of MDM setup. Only done full company owned devices myself.
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Looks like your management are bunch of cheapskates. If I was offered stipend for use of my personal phone, it would have to cover the cost of calls, text and data for business use, and on top hefty monthly fee for wear and tear. If you want me to use my device, you rent it from me, so you need to pay for it.
Now the control of the data. Under no circumstances I would allow the company any access to my phone. They need to trust me with it, or they can pound sand, end of story.
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I don't think it is legal to do that on personal devices.
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@Emad-R said in Remote management of employees personal cell phones ...:
I don't think it is legal to do that on personal devices.
It absolutely in in the U.S.
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@Emad-R said in Remote management of employees personal cell phones ...:
I don't think it is legal to do that on personal devices.
Legal to ask, not legal to require or pressure.
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@JaredBusch said in Remote management of employees personal cell phones ...:
@Emad-R said in Remote management of employees personal cell phones ...:
I don't think it is legal to do that on personal devices.
It absolutely in in the U.S.
That is why we keep winning this:
Canada Has Officially Ranked #1 In The World For Best Quality Of Life -
second year in a row of being the best -
@scottalanmiller said in Remote management of employees personal cell phones ...:
@BraswellJay said in Remote management of employees personal cell phones ...:
Our management team has decided that they want to end company issued cell phones and instead provide a monthly stipend for work use of personal phones. As part of that they want to to be able to protect company data on personal phones. Basically they want to wipe company data if the employee leaves the company.
Let's reword this...
Basically they said...
"We want to stop having the right to wipe devices and protect our data."
And then they said "We want to get back the thing we just gave up."
Which do they want, to not pay for the phones, or to control the data? They have to choose.
This was pretty much my thoughts as well so glad to see I'm not out in left field in thinking that way.
I had objected to the whole notion and told them that I wouldn't want to allow the company to control my personal phone and I doubted other employees did either.
But then one of the managers has a brother whose company has some control over his personal phone so I thought maybe the practice was more widespread than I had thought.
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@BraswellJay said in Remote management of employees personal cell phones ...:
@scottalanmiller said in Remote management of employees personal cell phones ...:
@BraswellJay said in Remote management of employees personal cell phones ...:
Our management team has decided that they want to end company issued cell phones and instead provide a monthly stipend for work use of personal phones. As part of that they want to to be able to protect company data on personal phones. Basically they want to wipe company data if the employee leaves the company.
Let's reword this...
Basically they said...
"We want to stop having the right to wipe devices and protect our data."
And then they said "We want to get back the thing we just gave up."
Which do they want, to not pay for the phones, or to control the data? They have to choose.
This was pretty much my thoughts as well so glad to see I'm not out in left field in thinking that way.
I had objected to the whole notion and told them that I wouldn't want to allow the company to control my personal phone and I doubted other employees did either.
But then one of the managers has a brother whose company has some control over his personal phone so I thought maybe the practice was more widespread than I had thought.
Many employees feel trapped. They don't feel they can say no without being fired. or they simply don't care/don't think about (oh that's the same thing).
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While I agree with all the arguments above, it is also true that there are things like selective wipe possible. But as stated it comes down to how much you wanna pay for the product to do something like that. As an employee I would be perfectly comfortable with allowing control of my device to a limited sandbox like that.
Of course she wants to have to trust your employer when they say that’s all they can do with the solution they are using.
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@NDC said in Remote management of employees personal cell phones ...:
I believe some devices/MDM setups allow you to create an isolated space on an employee owned device. You then control that isolated space not the whole device. When the employee leaves that controlled bit can be removed without wiping the device.
No idea how effective/reliable/manageable any of that is since I've not implemented or supported that style of MDM setup. Only done full company owned devices myself.
Yeah this is how Intune works with BYOD. It just manages and controls the company aspect.
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@BraswellJay said in Remote management of employees personal cell phones ...:
But then one of the managers has a brother whose company has some control over his personal phone so I thought maybe the practice was more widespread than I had thought.
Directly stealing from employees is actually common. In the US, employees are so scared and have so little protections from alternative retributions for sticking up for their "rights" that they often effectively have none.
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@scottalanmiller said in Remote management of employees personal cell phones ...:
@BraswellJay said in Remote management of employees personal cell phones ...:
But then one of the managers has a brother whose company has some control over his personal phone so I thought maybe the practice was more widespread than I had thought.
Directly stealing from employees is actually common. In the US, employees are so scared and have so little protections from alternative retributions for sticking up for their "rights" that they often effectively have none.
This is true in Canada too. Labour law does not help you unless you are prepared to get fired and take legal action.
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You can certainly do this with Intune and office 365. Basically you'd be able to wipe all corporate data as long as it's kept in office 365.
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@IRJ said in Remote management of employees personal cell phones ...:
You can certainly do this with Intune and office 365. Basically you'd be able to wipe all corporate data as long as it's kept in office 365.
With Office 365 MDM, you can't disable the ability to do a full remote wipe. You do have more control over that with GSuite. Does Intune give you more control?
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@flaxking said in Remote management of employees personal cell phones ...:
@IRJ said in Remote management of employees personal cell phones ...:
You can certainly do this with Intune and office 365. Basically you'd be able to wipe all corporate data as long as it's kept in office 365.
With Office 365 MDM, you can't disable the ability to do a full remote wipe. You do have more control over that with GSuite. Does Intune give you more control?
I'm pretty sure you can do what I described, but I'm not 100% sure.
