Mobile email management

1. What is mobile email management?

Email is the primary method of official communication within organizations. To keep mobile workforces connected and productive, it is essential that they can access their corporate mailboxes on their mobile devices. Through mobile email management, IT admins can facilitate secure access to enterprise email on workforces' smartphones, tablets, and laptops, keeping business-critical files protected from potential security threats.

2. Why should you manage enterprise mobile email?

The widespread use of mobile devices in the workplace has necessitated making corporate email accessible on those devices. However, mobile access can pose a security threat to corporate data. Employees might use untrusted devices, unapproved apps, or unsafe Wi-Fi connections to access their mailboxes or they might inadvertently share sensitive corporate email attachments, resulting in corporate data being leaked to unauthorized third parties. Besides this, the emails themselves might contain malware or other hidden threats that compromise the confidentiality of enterprise data on devices. To counter these security risks, enterprise mobile emails need to be managed by the IT team.

3. What are the challenges of enterprise mobile email management?

With various device types and platforms being used in an organization, it can be difficult to allow only trusted mobile devices to access enterprise email. To protect enterprise data in transit from being subject to security risks, IT admins have to ensure that secure communication protocols are used when emails are accessed on these devices. Automated backups to third-party cloud servers and the use of unapproved apps to view corporate emails and attachments make sensitive corporate data accessible to unauthorized app providers and cloud services.

In BYOD environments, ensuring security becomes more complicated since an employee leaving the organization could still have corporate email attachments downloaded onto their personal device. Furthermore, if a device is lost or stolen, the corporate data on it is at risk of falling into the wrong hands. These challenges can be overcome by using a mobile email management tool to manage and secure enterprise mobile email.

4. What are the key features of a mobile email management tool?

Mobile email management tools and services simplify enterprise email management by:

• Allowing admins to pre-configure enterprise email on the devices remotely and in bulk
• Ensuring that only trusted devices and approved apps can be used to access corporate mailboxes.
• Restricting the sharing of email data with unauthorized devices, users, and apps.
• Enforcing the use of secure protocols when users access their mailboxes.
• Virtually containerizing enterprise workspaces and emails on BYODs.

5. How can an MDM tool be leveraged for mobile email management?

A comprehensive mobile device management solution can enable IT admins to manage mobile email by:

• Configuring corporate email accounts for employees: IT admins need to ensure every single employee has a corporate email account for internal communication, as well as external interactions with customers, suppliers, and collaborators. Using MDM, you can create email accounts in bulk by associating an email policy with employees' devices (Android, iOS, and Windows). Creating individual email accounts for every single employee is tedious; dynamic variables simplify this task by automatically fetching the email addresses mapped to devices during enrollment. Additionally, MDM lets you configure the email signature, and set up a default email account for users.
• Configuring email restrictions: Many senders use HTML to add graphics and links to emails. These HTML emails pose a potential threat to devices in the form of hidden viruses and other malicious software that may be downloaded automatically. Using MDM, you can eliminate this threat by completely restricting the use of HTML format in emails in favor of plain text only. Automatic email forwarding is another important security concern that admins need to deal with. If an employee has enabled email forwarding to an outside address and left the company, sensitive data belonging to the organization may be lost. The situation gets more serious when critical information is exfiltrated to unauthorized third parties via email. A feasible way to prevent these situations is by using MDM to restrict the forwarding of emails. MDM also lets you manage the syncing of email addresses with third-party cloud services, the usage of email accounts from non-email apps, email notifications, and more.

• Ensuring secure communication: Email communication mostly uses email configuration standards such as POP or IMAP for retrieving email this typically involves transmitting the email content as plain text, possibly leaving confidential data vulnerable to eavesdropping attacks and other cyber attacks. The solution is to use an SSL/TLS connection, which ensures the email traffic is encrypted and secure during transit. Besides providing an additional layer of encryption through S/MIME, which retains message integrity and enhances data privacy, MDM lets you establish a secure communication channel for emails by enabling an SSL/TLS connection or by using SSL certificates for your Android, iOS, and Windows. Additionally, Simple Certificate Enrollment Protocol (SCEP) can be configured for iOS and Windows devices, to secure emails using certificates.
• Securing email attachments: Email attachments often include important documents containing sensitive data. Once these attachments are downloaded, they can be opened using any unmanaged app, shared to another device, and even backed up on third-party cloud services, resulting in data leakage. With MDM, you can rest assured that email attachments are protected not just during transit, but also after they're downloaded. For instance, with the ManageEngine MDM app's built-in Document Viewer ensures secure viewing and storage of important documents received as attachments. As sharing the documents to other devices or cloud services is restricted, corporate data is completely sandboxed, preventing security breaches. Alternatively, these documents can be accessed using other document viewer apps approved by your organization.

• Securing access to Exchange: Many organizations use Exchange Server to manage business emails, which is one of the main reasons that Exchange is constantly at risk of security threats. Despite their best efforts to restrict access to Exchange using firewall configurations and other security tools, many organizations aren't aware that they can control Exchange Server access at the device level with conditional access. To help you better protect your organization's Exchange environment, MDM allows you to restrict unmanaged devices' access to your Exchange server.
• Pre-configuring app settings and permissions: Email is the preferred form of communication for business, but configuring email accounts can be difficult and time-consuming. MDM's managed app configurations (iOS and Android) simplify the process considerably. You can customize the functionalities of any managed email app to suit your organizational requirements, distribute the app to devices, and preconfigure parameters such as account type, domain name, and email signature to make the app ready for corporate usage soon after installation. Productivity apps like IBM Verse (for Android and iOS), Microsoft Outlook, and Zoho Mail can be easily configured using MDM. Apart from this, MDM lets you preconfigure the app permissions. For instance, if you do not want email attachments to be stored on the device, you can disable the storage permission even before distributing the app. Permission for specific data can be configured as user-controlled, when it is not fundamental to the app's functionality. Assuming you require the Zoho Mail app primarily to manage corporate mails, configuring the permission to access the device contacts and SMS may come under the user's discretion. Similarly, if an app is being used to track the device, you can remotely force enable the app permission to access the device location.

6. What are the benefits of using Mobile Device Manager Plus for mobile email management?

Mobile Device Manager Plus is a complete MDM tool that also has enterprise and corporate email management capabilities allowing it to function as an email management software. Using Mobile Device Manager Plus for mobile email management allows IT admins to remotely preconfigure and protect enterprise email on devices across various platforms, all from a single console. The possibility of data leaks can be minimized by enforcing secure communication protocols, applying DLP policies, and distributing a trusted app to view email attachments that eliminates the need for third-party apps. Device data can be protected from hidden viruses or malware in emails by restricting the use of HTML. Using this MDM tool, an IT admin can even ensure that only compliant, trusted devices are allowed access to corporate resources like the Exchange server.