What is Mobile Content Management and how does it shield your Enterprise Data?

Hexnode
6 min readMar 11, 2021

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Ever since the first smartphone came out in 1994, its popularity has grown exponentially over the past two decades. With the entire world’s information available at your fingertips, it’s only natural that smartphones have crept into one’s work life. Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) has changed the whole perspective at which we look at office work. Imagine finishing work-related tasks on the same device you use to watch Minecraft videos. Pretty weird but cool, huh? But accessing corporate content on a personal device is a big no unless you have something to keep this data secure. That’s where Mobile Content Management comes in.

What is Mobile Content Management?

Every corporation has a ton of data, which doesn’t necessarily mean all employees can access all of it. Larger corporates have many employees, a lot of data, which requires many security levels. Statistics show that at least six documents are shared between employees every day. This scenario creates a need to distribute the right content to the right people, and Mobile Content Management (MCM) acts as the solution. MCM refers to the easy and secure distribution of information to and from devices belonging to the authorized personnel. Some Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) like Hexnode offers some content management features such as uploading data, distributing files to specific users and storing files in its secure repository.

MCM offers other features, such as editing the files stored on the cloud in collaboration with others who also have access to it. This allows employees to function as a team and access corporate information disregarding where they are. Imagine being in your beach shorts in Hawaii, and your boss calls you up and asks you to verify a few reports. You could just take out your phone, access the reports and check them. Easy as that. Simply put, MCMs should up the workplace efficiency while also improving employee convenience in accessing corporate content. With the growing significance in Content Management, we can surely see more exciting developments in the domain of secure content allocation.

Key features of Mobile Content Management

The features offered by an MCM solution varies based on the provider, and in some cases, UEMs have integrated Content Management services. But some features are considered to be essential to any Content Management solution.

Multi-channel Content Delivery

MCMs usually have a central content repository, which basically means all the information is stored in one place. Gone are the days where we rely on local storage to hoard data. 86% of companies rely on extensive cloud storage systems, which pretty much shows how popular cloud is. It is still advisable to use a backup storage in tandem with the cloud service because once a file is deleted from the cloud, it truly is gone. Hexnode supports content of various raw formats like pdf, jpeg, mp4, which will then be shared to different devices to which you can apply your own custom presentation styles.

Distribution of content into different devices

Not all employees need access to all corporate content. ‘Access has to be granted to employees based on their privileges’, this is a core function of MCMs. An MCM can be used to distribute corporate content depending on the privilege held by the employee. Using Hexnode, you can push content on different devices based on the various device or user attributes. You can also automate content management via dynamic groups, such that data will be pushed or removed from the device automatically based on prior set configurations.

Location-based content delivery

Suppose you want to send information to the California team, then you would have to find all the guys who work there one by one or just send the information to everyone currently in California. Most content management solutions like Hexnode have a system in place to send data based on current location. Hexnode utilizes Geofences to push content to people residing in a particular location. When they leave or arrive at the site, the data is removed or pushed respectively.

Containerizing work content

Accessing corporate data on your personal device is convenient, but it has risks as well. Your personal device is a weak link and is highly susceptible to data breaches. It would be very naïve for corporations to assume that their employees would be very responsible in handling corporate information. It’s not that they are doing it on purpose; it’s more like people forget how easily information can be stolen. Do you recall the times when an app asks you permission to access storage? Yup, that pretty much allows the app to access all your files. Hexnode can safeguard your work apps and data with a work container. A work container will segregate the work content from your personal content, so you don’t have to worry when utilizing your device for your personal needs.

Advantages of using an MCM

So how does all this help your enterprise? Sure, the features sound appealing, but do you really need an MCM? Let’s see if your enterprise and employees could use these perks to give them an extra edge.

Content Management and Security

Most people believe the pros of BYOD far outweigh the cons. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to bring down the cons even further. The most worrying factor in BYOD is security, which is totally intelligible. Employees tend to carelessly create gateways for data breaches to take place; hence an additional service to enhance security is essential. Employing MCM solutions can significantly decrease the odds of your enterprise experiencing a data breach. By handing the complete organization control over the content, MCM solutions manage to provide uncompromised security. By using UEMs with content management like Hexnode, we can implement more features that can improve device security significantly.

Ease of Access

At least 86% of employees claim to have had difficulties searching for documents. But in the case of organizations using MCMs, all the content is stored in a centralized repository. It can be accessed by anyone as long as they have access privileges. Additionally, You can specify the path of your content if using Hexnode. Distributing corporate content to the employees saves the time they’ll take to locate and access the files. This time could be utilized to complete other tasks, hence increasing the overall workforce productivity.

Remote Encryption

With the BYOD trend’s rising popularity, it’s pretty essential for the enterprise to secure the employee device. A study by Sophos shows that 44% of organizations consider data leakage as one of their top three security concerns. Encryption sounds like an excellent option to overcome that, but to encrypt all devices one by one? Now that sounds like a pain. What if you could encrypt the devices in one go? UEMs like Hexnode supports remote encryption, saving IT admins a lot of time and effort while securing the content in all enterprise devices from one platform.

Good Flexibility and Portability

With Content Management, all the information is stored in the cloud and is accessible from anywhere. This feature allows various employees stationed in different locations to function as a team when assigned to a collaborative task. Employees can also access corporate content from any place at any time, allowing them to complete their work tasks even if they are not physically present in the workplace. So even if you are out of station, you can always respond when suddenly assigned to urgent tasks.

To Sum it Up

The number of devices being brought by the employees to work is increasing, so are the liabilities that come with it. Also, with the increase in employees, we can say that there is a need for the distribution and management of corporate content based on the level of data access granted to them. We can say that some form of content management is vital for almost any enterprise, whether for distributing content to devices or securing information in BYOD devices.
UEMs with mobile content management like Hexnode offer straightforward solutions for secure distribution of corporate content along with a vast array of device management features. There are enough statistics to back the fact that enterprises not relying on Content Management have issues regarding the workforce’s efficiency. We are confident that MCM solutions can increase productivity and improve employee convenience. So, do you really need Content management? That’s for you to decide.

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Hexnode

Hexnode MDM is an award winning Enterprise Mobility Management vendor which helps businesses to secure and manage BYOD, COPE, apps and content.