[Term of the Day]: MDM

Term of the Day

Definition — What is MDM and what is its purpose?

Mobile Device Management (MDM) is end-to-end security software that enables the organization's IT department to manage, configure policies, deploy applications, configuration settings and secure employees' devices that are being used in the organization.

This software emerged in the early 2000s when the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) trend arose.

How does it work?

MDM relies on endpoint software called an MDM agent and an MDM server that resides in a data center.

IT administrators configure policies and deploy applications through the MDM server's management console, and the server then pushes those policies over the air to the MDM agent on the device. The agent applies the policies to the device by communicating with application programming interfaces (APIs) built directly into the device operating system.