BoxTone Adds Automated Compliance Management to MDM Platform

BoxTone enhances its mobile device management platform with automated security policy, compliance management capabilities and Active Directory integration.

BoxTone has added automated compliance management capabilities to its mobile device management software.

The Enterprise Mobile Management platform has been updated to include a fully automated policy and compliance management engine, a real-time mobile security dashboard, analytics, alerting and audit reporting, BoxTone said Sept. 26. The EMM directly integrates with policy and security systems such as Microsoft Active Directory and helps IT departments ensure mobile devices are compliant with corporate policy and industry regulations.

The EMM took an IT Service Management (ITSM)-based approach to mobile security, governance, risk and compliance, Alan Snyder, CEO at BoxTone, told eWEEK. By directly integrating with the enterprise's existing policy and security systems, EMM provides the CIO and CISO with access to tools for policy, change and compliance management. EMM supports BlackBerry, iOS and Android mobile operating system platforms.

BoxTone offers a "one-stop shop which covers all mobile device platforms," Snyder said.

EMM is aligned with core IT services to help organizations accelerate and sustain mobility initiatives-securely, reliably, and at the lowest risk and cost, according to Brian Reed, vice president of products at BoxTone. Most MDM technologies employ a manual, proprietary approach focused on initial device provisioning, which exposes the enterprise to security failures, regulatory breaches, service degradation and financial loss.

IT policies, procedures and tools to manage mobile devices must become an integral part of business regardless of who owns the device, the company said. Mobile device management has to cover the full life cycle of a device, from the first time it is used in the enterprise to when the employee no longer needs to be accessing corporate resources, according to Snyder.

Mobile devices need to be managed like all other IT assets, with CIOs and CISOs able to get real-time visibility, fully auditable analytics and integrated reporting that is necessary for enterprises to secure mobile devices and all of the services and systems accessible from the devices, Snyder said.

"The 'set it and forget it' old-world approach is doomed to failure as deployments become more dynamic and move from the hundreds to thousands of mobile devices and applications across the distributed enterprise," Reed said.

The BoxTone Security Management Dashboard provides real-time visibility into the global security posture and compliance status. The dashboard displays the overall enterprise status and offers the capability to drill down to see the results of each individual device's security and compliance audits. BoxTone Platform Integration integrates with existing security and policy management systems to ensure that policies are enforced consistently across the enterprise.

"Enterprise mobility cannot be done in isolation, and it cannot be seen as a simple feature/function mobile device management checklist," Reed said.

BoxTone Policy Management System automatically maps and extends existing enterprise policy defined in Active Directory and automatically synchronizes all policy changes to the device without requiring any manual action. The BoxTone Configuration Management System does the same thing for configuration settings, automatically adjusting device configurations based on changes to mobile and enterprise policies.

It's much more secure if the enterprise is using already defined groups in Active Directory to manage mobile devices instead of creating new groups within the EMM, Snyder said.

The BoxTone Compliance Management System continuously monitors the end-to-end security status of all enterprise devices, applications, mobile services and dependent infrastructure. All violations are automatically detected, remediated and logged. BoxTone Mobile Analytics includes a data warehouse with governance as well as risk and compliance reporting with full audit capabilities.