MaaS360 Delivers New BYOD Privacy Settings to Protect Personally Identifiable Information

SAN FRANCISCO and BLUE BELL, Pa., March 5, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Consumerization of IT in the Enterprise conference -- iPads, iPhones and Androids have revolutionized businesses. With the popularity of bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies, employees now have the freedom to use their personal smartphones and tablets to get work done anytime, anywhere. However, there's a growing concern on the part of employees about how much access to information a company has on their personal devices, such as contacts, location history and even what applications have been installed by the user. The future of BYOD and mobile productivity hinges upon the ability of IT to limit its involvement and access to personal information on employee-owned devices while being able to properly secure corporate data.

Fiberlink®, the leader in software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions for secure mobile device management (MDM) and mobile application management (MAM), announced their BYOD Privacy Settings feature that protects personal employee information from the eyes of corporate IT. The company's MaaS360 MDM platform delivers an easy and effective way for IT to block Personally Identifiable Information (PII) from being collected on smartphones and tablets. Administrators simply select which "Privacy Settings" they wish to implement and MaaS360 takes care of the rest. This innovative personal device privacy puts a much-needed layer of protection in place between employees and corporations.

PII is a nagging issue for IT as well as employees due to legal and policy regulations. Many companies struggle with the need to avoid collecting PII on both corporate and employee-owned devices. In some European countries, regulations prohibit systems from capturing personally identifiable information, yet IT often lacks effective tools to block such data.

"Imposing corporate controls on personal devices could mean conflict with privacy laws and regulations. In some countries where stringent privacy laws exist, a corporation may not be able to audit the network activity of personal devices (even when the device is on the business premises), enforce acceptable usage policies...,"according to an April 2011 Forrester Research report titled Managing The Security And Risk Challenges Of Personal Devices In The Workplace written by Chenxi Wang, Ph.D. "For a global organization, where your operations must comply with multiple, different privacy regulations, knowing how to monitor and control personal devices on your network can indeed be a challenge. It may also mean that you must develop different policies for different regions."

MaaS360's BYOD Privacy Settings feature helps companies meet PII regulations and provides added comfort for employees who are taking advantage of BYOD policies by:

• Offering IT a simple policy paradigm to prevent viewing of personal information on smartphones and tablets
• Disabling app inventory reporting to restrict administrators from seeing installed personal applications outside of the corporate app catalog
• Deactivating location services to prevent access to location indicators such as physical address, geographical coordinates, IP address and Wi-Fi SSID

"The details around PII have employees concerned about privacy on their mobile devices. MaaS360 provides the ability to easily and confidently separate private lives from working lives," said Jim Szafranski, senior vice president, Products, at Fiberlink. "MaaS360 continues to innovate in areas for both IT and employees, making mobile working and personal choice safe and efficient for everyone."

The BYOD strategy continues to be widely adopted. Enterprises need the right tools to enable employee choice without sacrificing security or personal privacy. MaaS360 provides a robust set of BYOD management capabilities including a simplified over-the-air (OTA) device enrollment process, automated device approval, configuration and policy management based on device ownership, a self-service employee support portal and selective wipe of corporate data. MaaS360 provides these comprehensive enterprise capabilities across all major mobile operating systems including, iOS, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone. MaaS360 also supports PC and Mac computers enabling organizations to implement the most complete BYOD program through a single, unified management console.

Fiberlink is exhibiting at Consumerization of IT in the Enterprise Conference (CITE) March 4th - 6th at the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco. Visit booth #308 to talk with executives and see a demo of MaaS360.

About Fiberlink

Fiberlink is the recognized leader in software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions for secure enterprise mobile device and application management. Its cloud-based MaaS360 platform provides IT organizations with mobility intelligence and control over mobile devices, applications and content to enhance the mobile user experience and keep corporate data secure across smartphones, tablets, and laptops. MaaS360 helps companies monitor the expanding suite of mobile operating systems, including Apple iOS, Android, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone. Named by Network World as the Clear Choice Test winner for mobile device management solutions, MaaS360 is used to manage and secure more than one million endpoints globally. For more information, please visit http://www.maas360.com.

© 2012 MaaS360 and the MaaS360 logo are trademarks of Fiberlink Communications and may be registered in certain jurisdictions. All other brand names are trademarks of their respective partners.

For Additional Information Contact:

Fiberlink
Joe Palladino or Lesley Sullivan
[email protected]
(781) 684-0770

SOURCE Fiberlink