Overview

Background

In the past, organizations used to strictly enforce the COPE (corporate owned, personally enabled) model on mobile devices to ensure data security. However, multiple users can use a single COPE device, reducing the level of accountability and increasing the level of vulnerability. Today organizations are getting accustomed to adopting the BYOD (bring your own device) program, which allows employees to use their personal mobile devices to access valuable corporate data and applications. This helps to increase employee collaboration, efficiency, and productivity; however, the organization is vulnerable to security threats. Therefore, organizations have a growing need to monitor and manage corporate and personal (employee-owned) mobile devices that have access to corporate data. 

WSO2 EMM

WSO2 Enterprise Mobility Manager (EMM) is a unique solution designed to specifically address the mobile enterprise needs. EMM includes two key aspects: Mobile Device Management (MDM) and Mobile Application Management (MAM). WSO2 EMM also supports single sign-on (SSO) and multi-tenancy. 

EMM enables organizations to secure, manage and monitor Android, iOS, and Windows-powered devices (e.g., smartphones, iPod touch devices and tablet PCs), irrespective of the mobile operator, service provider, or the organization. Users need to accept the license agreement, which states all the actions that can be carried out on the device when enrolling with EMM. WSO2 EMM only controls the corporate data that is present on the devices, while the personal data is left untouched.

The administrator can create policies in EMM and define the device management rules that must be applied on devices. When employees register their devices with EMM, the applicable policy rules (e.g., enabling the phone lock, disabling the camera, and more) will be enforced on their devices. WSO2 EMM constantly monitors all the registered devices for policy compliance. WSO2 EMM will automatically generate a notification and carry out follow-up actions in the event a device is in violation of the enforced policy. The administrator can select the follow-up actions (e.g., send the user a warning message, enforce the policy again, and more) based on their security requirements. In addition, the administrators or the users can also install an application on their device and view the list of applications installed on their devices. 

WSO2 EMM consists of three key consoles: EMM Console, Publisher, and Store. Users use the Publisher to manage enterprise apps throughout their application lifecycle, which includes application states such as, published, unpublished, approved, rejected, deprecated, and retired. The Store acts as a marketplace and contains all the corporate mobile apps, which users can search, view, rate, and install on-demand. The administrator uses the EMM Console to manage users, administer EMM policies, install or uninstall mobile apps in bulk, and more. Furthermore, WSO2 EMM is released under Apache Software License Version 2.0, one of the most business-friendly licenses available today.