MDM Question - deleting documents

[fiza]

Our Governors are concerned about sensitive data being downloaded onto mobile devices. It has been suggested by one of them that an MDM App will delete data if the device is stolen or the person leaves the School. Is this true? If I receive an email from another member of Staff with an attachment and then save that attachment on my phone can the document be deleted remotely if I lose the phone or leave my employment?

[Steve21]

Normally it's a full wipe of the phone via mobile management, so you can force a wipe if it's lost, not to remove a single item etc I don't think it's possible

 

Steve

[Blue_Cookeh]

Depending on your MDM, you could get around this with a sandboxed mail app - I know GOOD Mobile Messaging does this but not sure of others. All mail was done via GOOD and any attachments opened via GOOD plugins.

[pete]

Our Governors are concerned about sensitive data being downloaded onto mobile devices. It has been suggested by one of them that an MDM App will delete data if the device is stolen or the person leaves the School. Is this true? If I receive an email from another member of Staff with an attachment and then save that attachment on my phone can the document be deleted remotely if I lose the phone or leave my employment?

 

"It depends on the MDM".

 

A whole-device MDM wouldn't stop (for example), you downloading it and then syncing it to Dropbox / personal Google Drive / docs.

 

It could be set to completely wipe the device, (however that's a question to get legal advice/explicit informed consent on before proceeding) but if the device is backed up to iCloud/Google, the person can restore the data.

 

An MDM that used a separate (sandboxed) email program that only allowed accessing downloaded files using another app inside the sandbox and disabled screenshots of apps running in the sandbox, yes-ish. It's more of a faff to read email, but wiping it would only affect school data, not personal files.

 

You'd also need to disable downloading/opening attachments via web browsers on personal devices.

 

---

 

A sufficiently-motivated individual with access to the files can always bypass this though. At best you're making it tricky (separate phone to take pictures of "work" phone + Google Translate for OCR) to do.

Edited May 23, 2018 by pete

[Brimstone]

Our Governors are concerned about sensitive data being downloaded onto mobile devices. It has been suggested by one of them that an MDM App will delete data if the device is stolen or the person leaves the School. Is this true? If I receive an email from another member of Staff with an attachment and then save that attachment on my phone can the document be deleted remotely if I lose the phone or leave my employment?

 

A factory reset on an iOS device or remote wipe via MDM wipes everything on the device, all photos documents etc.