What is Lockdown Solution for Enterprises, and Why Is It Important?
A lockdown solution, often referred to as kiosk, or kiosk mode, allows enterprises to limit a mobile device’s functionality to turn it into a specific purpose device. It also allows them to monitor, manage, and control the device remotely to change its functionalities, settings, and access.
A lockdown solution grants sweeping admin powers to enterprises over mobile devices and allows them to restrict the usability of these devices to what they were intended for. Typically, enterprises can download such solutions on the devices in the form of apps and control the devices remotely using a console. They can bulk enroll devices onto such solutions and manage a huge number of them effortlessly. Some of the most powerful solutions even disable all the physical buttons, USB ports, factory reset, and a variety of settings on the devices.
Why Are They Important?
Lockdown solutions bring far-ranging benefits to businesses from advanced security to productivity boost. Here are the various ways in which lockdown solutions can help enterprises:
Eliminate Distractions
Distractions at the workplace cost the American businesses a whopping $544 billion in lost productivity.
Internet surfing for personal use is the biggest contributor to this lost productivity. Besides internet surfing, other distractions include games, social media apps, entertainment apps, and so on. Lockdown solutions can restrict your employees’ web surfing activities to only whitelisted websites and a select few apps.
Without any distractions, the productivity of your employees will experience marked improvement.
Use Kiosk Modes
Mobile devices are now being commonly used as POS terminals and kiosks in stores. Employees and customers can quit the enterprise apps and use these devices for other purposes like entertainment. Most lockdown solutions come with kiosk modes, wherein the device is locked to specific kiosk app or apps and allow access to only select websites.
Improve Security
Devices get stolen or lost all the time. If an unauthorized person accesses the device, confidential corporate data may be compromised. Lockdown solutions allow enterprises to wipe, lock, and reset these devices remotely. This prevents confidential corporate data from falling into the wrong hands.
Likewise, by blacklisting apps that are not relevant to the purpose of the device, enterprises can drastically improve device security, as it’s impossible to know all the sources of vulnerabilities. For instance, the ubiquitously used email is the medium for 92% of malware delivery.
Restrict Settings & Access
All the above benefits can be realized only when the device users are not allowed to change the restrictions. Critical features like GPS, Wi-Fi, data connectivity, screen orientation, audio, and so on must be enabled or disabled by the enterprises in accordance with the intended purpose of the device. For instance, if a mobile device is being used to provide real-time location data to enterprises remotely, then the user should not be allowed to disable the GPS or install a location falsifying app.
Similarly, users must have device permissions in line with their organization roles. Admin settings must be available to only those employees who have the authorization to change them. This way, the lockdown solution’s functions will not be overridden by unauthorized people.
Custom Branding
Lockdown solutions allow businesses to use wallpapers, company logo, fonts, and other branding elements to create customized device experiences for the users. This enriches the user’s experience with the brand and perhaps even establish a deeper brand-consumer connect.