Do You Have A Strategy To Keep Your Construction Crew Mobile?

Creating A Strategy To Keep Your Construction Crew Mobile

Mobile devices have made it easier and easier to get work done while on the go. Laptops, tablets, and smartphones offer simple ways to share and review data, stay in touch with employees, and more while on the road. As you well know, a lot of your firm’s work is on the road and at job sites.

That’s why so much of today’s workforce operates outside the office – they can do so, thanks to a combination of the cloud and mobile devices. By 2020, the number of smartphone users around the world is expected to reach 2.87 billion.

3 Reasons Your IT Company Should Support Mobile Technology

1. Lower Your Expenses
   Having your staff use their personal devices for work means that you don’t have to pay for the technology they’d be using otherwise. Depending on the size of your firm, that could mean potential savings of thousands of dollars that would have been necessary to pay for tablets and work phones.
2. Improve Your Crew’s Work Experience
   Allowing your staff to use their technology also means there’s no pesky learning curve to overcome with new devices. Instead of having to make sure your staff knows how to use the hardware at work, they can simply use the phone, tablet and/or laptop they’re already familiar with.
   
3. Increase Your Workplace Effectivity
   Being able to use a mobile device, managing and executing tasks using the devices they’re familiar with can greatly boost productivity – in some cases, up to 53%.

However, you shouldn’t try to implement mobile device use in the workplace without a plan…

Has Your IT Company Talked About Mobile Device Management With You?

This type of comprehensive policy dictates how your employees can use their personal devices for work purposes, dictating which security apps should be installed, and what best practices need to be followed.

An effective MDM policy should also instill safe and secure practices for employees that use personal devices for business purposes. Key points include:

• How Devices Should Be Used
  Integrated into your internal network, these devices can be used to access, store, transmit, and receive business data.You’ll need to have policies in place to regulate how employees use their devices to interact with sensitive data. Take the time to consider the risks associated with mobile device use, such as the potential for devices containing business data to be lost or stolen, infected with malware, or the potential for accidental disclosure of confidential information through sharing a device with a family member or connecting to an unsecured wireless network.
• What The Risks Are (And How To Mitigate Them)
  A risk analysis will help you identify vulnerabilities in your security infrastructure, and help you determine the safeguards, policies, and procedures you’ll need to have in place.Assessments should be conducted periodically, especially after a new device is granted access, a device is lost or stolen, or a security breach is suspected.
• How Policies Are Tracked And Reviewed
  Policies that are designed for mobile devices will help you manage risks and vulnerabilities specific to these devices.These policies should include processes for identifying all devices being used to access business data, routinely checking that all devices have the correct security and configuration settings in place, whether or not staff can use mobile devices to access internal systems, whether staff can take work devices home with them, and how you will go about deactivating or revoking the access of staff members who are no longer employed.
• What Isn’t Allowed
  Maintaining mobile security isn’t just about having the right apps – it means following the right protocols, to eliminate unknown variables and maintain security redundancies:
  1. Review installed apps and remove any unused ones on a regular basis.
  2. Review app permissions when installing, and when updates are made.
  3. Enable Auto Update, so that identified security risks are eliminated as quickly as possible.
  4. Keep data backed up to the cloud or a secondary device (or both).
• How Your Crew Contributes To MDM
  Everyone on your staff should be educated on how best to use mobile devices to avoid costly security errors. Your safeguards can’t protect you or your clients if your staff doesn’t understand your policies and procedures, and lacks a basic grasp of security best practices.Your entire team should be taught how to secure their devices, how to protect business data, what the risks are, and how to avoid common security mistakes.

Like this article? Check out the following blogs to learn more:

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