Symantec Mobile Management Suite

The Symantec company provided in the fall of 2012 the new product Mobile Management Suite (MMS) which offers "umbrella" approach to mobile device management, applications and their protection. Besides, the tool kit of Symantec of MMS considerably simplifies licensing of tools for control of mobile systems at the enterprise due to their consolidation in the general offer.

With modern popularity of mobile devices at work and houses at the IT administrator two new fields of activity appeared: MDM (Management of Mobile Devices is mobile device management) and MAM (Management of Mobile Applications is management of mobile applications). Moreover, the mobile equipment made corporate networks incredibly diverse.

The MMS Symantec platform supports all known models of deployment of the mobile equipment in network of the enterprise. From the point of view of client platforms support of the latest mobile Android 4.1, IOS 6 and Windows Phone 7.5 OS is implemented. In terms of integration with already working management systems support of Symantec Endpoint Management and Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager technologies is provided. Among other things, black lists of applications, control to the addresses e-mail and observance of obligatory measures for protection of the critical information are maintained.

According to representatives of Symantec, many system providers of the class MDM and MAM offer almost identical systems which are not considering a difference in opportunities of each under control device. Unlike competitors, the new system of Symantec was created almost from scratch, counting upon integration with management systems. Licensing of Symantec of MMS is based on the number of users, but not devices. Besides, perpetual and subscription licenses are supported.

It is interesting that in Symantec company expect fast failure from aspiration completely to control the user personal devices. The matter is that the attempt of such control is connected with serious difficulties of ethical and legislative character, especially in a case with part-time workers who work in several companies and are forced to observe several politician at the same time at once. According to Symantec, control of applications and documents using the encoded containers looks more important, without concerning other contents in memory of the device. It is possible to achieve it using different methods, including additional authorization for specific applications, forced removal of data after completion of work with applications and also blocking of access to the application if the user tries to get unauthorized access to functions of the device.

Approach using virtual machines on mobile devices in Symantec is considered unpromising as it "kills all performance and productivity". Though virtualization as a method to separate personal data from office, can become the optimal choice for some companies, sooner or later it is necessary to recognize quite extensive communication between personal and office activity of each employee.