Home Working & Mobile Devices – Risks & Opportunities Posted at: June 17, 2020 Posted in: All, Recalibrating Spend It is widely anticipated that – accelerated by the pandemic – flexible working will become the norm, and that employees will work significantly greater periods of time from their home office. The Chief Executive of Barclays certainly believes that large numbers of people working together in a central environment will become “a thing of the past”. Whilst this brings great opportunities it also brings great risk, and one common area that firms are likely to overlook is security of their Mobile devices. Employee’s Mobiles now effectively hold all of the data previously stored on a laptop (through cloud hosting such as Microsoft One Drive). If employees are to be home-based much more frequently then it follows that they will require internal IT support, supplied remotely, more frequently. This gives a great opportunity to fraudsters, who will exploit the lack of face-to-face interaction with IT support to gain access to employee data. This will be achieved by impersonating the IT department over the phone and tricking the user into revealing details/allowing access. Firms should start reviewing their Mobile contracts and arrangements. A plethora of Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions are available which help protect from this threat, with widely varying costs and features. Often these services can be purchased at a discount with the main Mobile procurement. We are experienced in analysing and selecting the best overall solutions for our clients, whilst obtaining maximum value from the core Mobile contract itself. Our reviews include conducting a full analysis of requirements to ensure that the chosen solution will meet future needs and then assisting firms with implementation. Subsequently monitoring and managing the contract, services, invoicing, reporting etc. to ensure that the benefits we negotiate are delivered and built upon. In addition to re-negotiate as demand changes. We’re happy to work on gainshare fees, so there’s no cash outlay for your business until savings are delivered and we take the risk for delivering savings. We’re also happy to work on other fee arrangements if you’d prefer.If you’d like to discuss how we would help, please contact Jonny Michael e: j.michael@jmclconsulting.com or mobile: 07831 390161.
