Automatic Time Synchronization on Mobile Devices
A common problem with mobile devices is that their time and date gets out of sync with that of the server or the actual correct time. This can be an issue for applications which use time on the device for their calculation, storage or some logic. Incorrect time can also lead to inconsistency between device and server data which is not desired.
SureMDM provides a very simple solution for this time sync problem. You can apply a ‘Timesync’ job to the devices managed by SureMDM and that’s all, all your devices will automatically update their time with that of the server at the specified time intervals. Here’s how you can do it:
Steps
1. Login to SureMDM web console
2. Click on the Jobs tab on the left
3. Click on New->Windows Mobile->Nix Agent Settings->OK
4. You get the following screen on your SureMDM Console
Synchronize time on mobile devices with SureMDM
5. Tick the time synchronization checkbox and select your preferred Periodicity interval
6. Click OK to save the job
7. Now select your device(s) or a Group of devices and click on ‘Apply’ button to open up the available jobs window
8. Select the Timesync job you just created and click on ‘OK’.
Sit back and relax, your device(s) are ready to update time on their own.
Author: Panshul Srivastava
42Gears Mobility Systems
Linkedin group “Enterprise Android” launched
Join the linkedin group Enterprise Android to discuss all about enterprise use of Android platform. Come...join the group...share information, ask questions and get engaged in discussions about devices, applications, strategies and best practices.
See you there... http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=4217655
How to know Android Applications Permissions
Android OS runs applications in separate sandboxes which means an application cannot directly access data or other resources belonging to another application. Rarely an application can do everything on its own. They usually need resources belonging to other applications installed on the system.
Android provides additional capabilities to applications by means of "Permissions". An application has to request for a permission before accessing data/resources shared by another application. For e.g. if an application wants to read contacts stored on the phone, the application developer must add android.permission.READ_CONTACTS permission to the manifest file of the application.
Before you download and install an application from the Android market, you can view all the permissions it is requesting for. One needs to be careful the kind of permissions that the applications ask for. Its a red flag if a puzzle game wants access to your location and also wants to read your contacts.
This problem becomes even more serious for companies. Your employees might be installing applications directly or through the Android market without any regard to what those applications could do. If you are an IT guy, you have the responsibility to make sure the corporate business data in protected from going out to unknown parties. But what can you do?
SureMDM has a cool feature that shows complete list of applications installed on the Android device, along with all the permissions that those apps are asking for.
Steps:
1. Login into the SureMDM Web Console,
2. Select your smartphone or tablet from the device list.
3. Click on the Apps buttons to see list of installed apps on the device.
4. Select an Application and Click on Permission button. Screen similar to the following will popup.
Angry Birds Permissions
Above snapshot shows what permissions are required by Angry Birds when it runs on your Android smartphone or tablet.
Conclusion
As a user we need to be careful about what the third-party applications might be doing on our phones. This becomes even more important for the enterprises in order to protect and safeguard the business information.
42Gears Mobility Systems is a leading vendor of mobile device management and security products. To know more about our game-changing approach to mobile device management visit http://www.42gears.com.
Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)
“Bring your own device” (BYOD) is a new trend whereby companies allow their employees to bring their mobile devices (Smartphones or tablets) to work and allow them to be used for business purposes with access to company network and data. It’s a part of consumerization-of-IT wave that has started to gain serious traction in last two years. A recent survey has all the numbers.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/bring-your-own-device-becoming-accepted-business-practice-survey/63811
BYOD benefits:
1. Employees are more comfortable in using the devices of their choice. They don’t have to use two devices anymore, one for personal and one for business work.
2. With BYOD program in place, companies can avoid making investments for purchasing the devices. E.g. a company with 100 employees will usually spend $400 per Smartphone or tablet with a total cost of $40K. All that cost is now saved and so is the overhead and additional cost of commissioning, asset tracking and maintenance of the devices.
BYOD challenges:
1. With BYOD, Employees are going to store personal and business data on a single device. It is a challenge to ensure that the business data is protected.
2. Companies need to make sure that the devices are secure i.e. password policies are applied and data encryption is enabled. Normally users are not careful with their personal devices but companies cannot afford risking loss of business data in case the phone is lost or stolen
3. People tend to change gadgets as soon as something new and fancy is available. Employees will be upgrading to newer devices faster than ever. IT department has to make sure they keep themselves updated with new technology trends to ensure compliance goals are continually met. IT needs to move faster than the employees. Good Luck!
Above challenges can be alleviated to a large extent by using mobile device management tools (MDM). Overall cost for deploying these solutions is much lower than the cost of the devices.
Where BYOD won’t work?
BYOD model does not work in all cases. Some businesses want to super-secure the devices and restrict employees to use only certain applications or want the worker to access only a particular website on the device and nothing else. Of course the employee would want to have the freedom to play Angry Birds or browse news website once in a while on her “own” device. In such cases it’s better to provide a company owned devices to the employees.
Conclusion
BYOD is a new trend that has gained deep inroads into the financial services sector and looks promising to hit other domains as well. It could be beneficial to both employees and the employer. A well thought IT strategy around policy-based deployment, security, and management of “personal” devices is a pre-requisite for rolling out the BYOD program.
Lets us know what you think about BYOD. Will it work?
42Gears Mobility Systems is a leading vendor of mobile device management and security products. To know more about our game-changing approach to mobile device management visit http://www.42gears.com.
Kiosk mode on Android
SureLock for Android has been released. Trial version is available for download from our website as well as from the Android market.
Lock down android device into kiosk mode
Features:
* Lock down smartphones and tablets into kiosk mode
* Restrict users to allowed applications only
* Block users from accessing Home screen
* Block user from playing games, browsing or installing unapproved applications
* Block user from changing System Settings
* Admin can securely unlock the device with a password
Check out more details on our website at http://www.42gears.com/surelock/
Block users from running unallowed applications on Samsung Galaxy Tab 10
So your company has decided to give away tablets like Samsung Galaxy Tab to the employees for use for business purposes only. Well... you may be in for a surprise. As soon as they lay their hands on the tablets, the users are going to head straight to Android Market and start downloading cool free games and other applications. Soon the device will be full of useless applications resulting in performance degradation. Moreover if the tablet has a data plan, downloading such applications can cost you lots of money for data charges.
Android Tablets -> Unproductive Employees -> Unhappy Boss
SureMDM provides a very useful feature whereby you can remotely lockdown the android tablet (as well as android smartphones). Locking down means you can individually lock the installed applications and also disable the user from installing new applications. Whenever a user tries to launch a locked application, the user will be asked to enter a PIN (as configured by the administrator). No PIN is asked for if the application is not locked.
Android Tablets -> Locked by MDM -> Productive Employees -> Happy Boss
Use SureMDM to keep your employees productive which will surely make your boss happy. 
Crash Reporter for Android application developers
Programs crashing post release is not uncommon. Such situations are also not easy to handle as they might be occuring under certain conditions which might not easy to replicate. Crash dumps come in handy to solve such field issues.
Wikipedia defines crash reporter as "an application whose function is to report crash data to a third party, usually to the party responsible for the crashed program. Crash reports often include data such as stack traces, type of crash, and version of software. This information helps software developers to diagnose and fix the underlying problem causing the crash."
Imagine a Logistics Company who has deployed their newly developed "Proof of Delivery" (POD) application. The application was "sufficiently" tested in-house where it went through multiple validation cycles. It was then commissioned for use on hundreds on Android based devices going into the hands of the mobile workers.
Crashed Android application
Everything was working fine until one day a report came in coming in from the field stating that the POD application was crashing intermitently. There was apparently no way to reproduce the behavior consistently. The issue was escalated to the development team which got ready to look into the "bug". But there was problem. This particular phone was hundreds of miles away and there was no way the dev team could figure out what was happenning to the application. If only they could get hold of the stack trace when the application crashes. That was not possible as the end-user was a NOT programmer or a techie who could pull the crash report from the phone and send it to the development team.
Thats when the development team got an idea. They remembered when the devices were rolled-out, the IT department had installed a Remote Mobile Device Management solution to keep an eye on the devices in the field. This MDM system was actively being used to gather various device health information, to push new software updates, to secure and to track the phones.
IT manager knew about a feature in the MDM solution that could monitor any application on the device and could report issues incase the application failed. MDM was asked to monitor the POD application. The user was then asked to launch it.
Crash Report in SureMDM
A few hours later the application crashed, but this time MDM caught the crash, collect the crash report with stack trace. This crash report was provided to the development team. And voila! the problem was fixed in no time by the smart developers. New version of the POD application was re-deployed on the phones remotely using the MDM solution.
Conclusion
Crash Reporting is an important feature which ensures any serious issues with the application don't go un-reported. Sometimes such crash reports are the only way to diagnose and fix the problems.
Wondering which MDM solution supports Crash Reporting for Android devices. Thats SureMDM from 42Gears Mobility Systems. Now you can not only control and manage the mobile devices, but also the mobile applications when they run into problems.
42Gears Mobility Systems Releases Mobile Browser Lockdown for Windows Mobile and Windows CE devices
For Immediate Release
Bangalore, India – September 04, 2011: 42Gears Mobility Systems today announced release of latest version of KioskIE browser lockdown solution for mobile devices. KioskIE provides a secure and controlled environment for using mobile web applications on devices based on industrial grade Windows Mobile 6.5 and Windows CE 6.0 platforms.
Web applications are easy to develop, deploy and update than the traditional client-server applications. But they require a web browser to run. Default browsers on mobile devices are designed for consumers with general purpose usability which is not suitable for running Mobile LOB (Line of business) applications including data collection applications such as warehouse management, field-service, parcel delivery etc.
KioskIE runs on top of built-in Internet Explorer browser that comes as part of Windows Mobile and Windows CE devices. KioskIE converts built-in general purpose browser into a locked-browser where extensive feature-set of original browser are still available to the web application developer but the end-users can only use the web application and nothing else. Various lockdown options include blocking access to un-allowed websites, disable tap-and-hold context menu, disable keypad and/or disable access to browser settings such as Favorites or Security options.
Lockdown of Internet Explorer is achieved easily using KioskIE control panel applet. And moreover whenever required administrator can quit the locked-down mode and return the browser to default settings.
"By providing easiest and most effective mobile browser lock down, 42Gears KioskIE is able to improve the productivity of mobile workers, increase application reliability and reduce the total cost associated with development and deployment of mobile web applications", said Onkar Singh, Managing Director at 42Gears.
KioskIE has become an important part of 42Gears Enterprise Mobility Management Suite along with SureMDM, SureLock and SureCop.
More information about KioskIE is available at http://www.42gears.com/products.html.
For free trial and price quotation email sales@42gears.com.
Single Most Effective Tip to Protect Smartphones
Mobile phones getting lost or stolen is a common occurrence. Almost 37% smartphone users have had this experience in the past. Loss of phone also means loss of privacy or critical business data which could cost more than the phone itself.
People will continue to lose phones but fortunately there is a secret to make sure that atleast the personal or business data does not fall into the wrong hands. And the secret is.... Passwords. Yes! Setting a Strong password (see the emphasis on "strong") can give you a peace of mind.
Not having a strong password is as good as not having one at all. I am sure you have heard about Murdoch phone hacking scandal. Reset your password if it is among the commonly used passwords. Have a look at top 10 stupid passwords.
If you are responsible for looking after IT assets of a company you must make it mandatory for employees with mobile phones and tablets to have a strong password set on their devices. Enforcing this simple and effective security policy should become a top priority for all companies. It's worth it.