Mobile threat defense solutions offer peace of mind to companies adopting the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) approach as they secure all endpoints, leaving no room for vulnerabilities. They provide visibility into the security levels of connected devices, ensuring that the business network is safeguarded against attacks.

How does Mobile threat defense work?

Mobile threat defense (MTD) uses advanced algorithms and machine learning to protect mobile devices from cyberattacks. MTD involves:

• Incessant scanning and monitoring of devices for any suspicious activity as well as analyzing device behavior, OS versions, app usage and firmware for vulnerabilities.
• Recognizing potential risks in grayware and ensuring the validity of digital certificates.
• Monitoring network traffic and identifying unsecure Wi-Fi networks.
• Encrypting data while it is being transmitted to prevent data leakage due to interception.

Once a threat is detected, MTD solutions take immediate actions like:

• Quarantining malicious apps to prevent further damage.
• Automatically removing harmful apps to ensure device integrity.
• Enforcing security policies to restore a safe and compliant environment.
• Alerting IT administrators and the organization for timely intervention and monitoring.

MTD has become non-negotiable, given the increasing reliance on mobile devices and their susceptibility to cyber threats. Furthermore, many MTD solutions integrate seamlessly with unified endpoint management (UEM) platforms, offering a unified approach to managing devices and mitigating threats.

The post What is Mobile Threat Defense? appeared first on Hexnode Blogs.

The “Reports” tab in Hexnode UEM:

To simplify access and management, the Reports tab in the Hexnode portal is divided into three sub-tabs:

• Pre-defined reports: Ready-made reports that cover common use cases and provide quick, actionable insights.
• Custom reports: Admins can define their own criteria and data layout to generate reports tailored to their specific needs.
• Scheduled reports: Automate reports to run at specific intervals and ensure up-to-date information without manual intervention.

This organization ensures that admins can quickly access, customize, or automate reports, streamlining the entire reporting process.

Hexnode custom reports: Your data, your way

Flexibility is at the core of the custom reports feature that Hexnode offers. Whether it’s device management, policy tracking, or audit trails, admins can generate personalized reports that align with specific goals. With pre-built templates, custom column selection, and scheduled automation, Hexnode ensures that report generation is both streamlined and efficient. The custom reports feature, essentially, follows a two-pronged approach to data extraction:

• Targeted reports: Create reports focusing on specific configurations or device attributes.
  Example: Generate a report listing devices with a failing compliance status or missing a critical policy. This helps admins quickly identify and address issues.
• Data granularity: Select only the data columns that matter.
  Example: If you only need app inventory details, leave out user information. Custom reports allow you to organize and display data the way you need, making it easier to analyze and act on.

Additionally, Hexnode provides templates for custom reports that make report creation easier. These templates cover popular admin requests, making it quick and easy to generate customized reports without starting from scratch.

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All the administrators tasked with overseeing endpoint security can be assigned any of the three pre-defined technician roles or roles that can be customized as per need and convenience to manage and secure endpoints across the organization.

Pre-defined technician roles in Hexnode:

The three pre-defined roles available by default are:

• Admins:

  The ‘ Admin ‘ role is for the technicians with full privileges. Consequently, they can access all functionalities offered by the portal. The first admin to sign in to the portal is the ‘Super Admin.’

• Apps and Reports Manager:

  The ‘ Apps and Reports Manager ‘ role is for the technicians who only need access to the apps and reports tab. They can use the functionalities under the Apps and Reports tabs. Additionally, they can view the dashboard.

• Reports Manager:

  The ‘ Reports Manager ‘ role is for the technicians who only need access to the dashboard. They work with the features under the reports tab.

Custom technician roles:

Apart from these pre-defined roles, Hexnode also offers the option to customize the roles for technicians. Owing to the difference in strategies and methods employed by organizations to establish and manage access control workflow, experts at Hexnode have understood the importance of flexibility. As a result, Hexnode has now released the custom technician roles feature that lets you customize the roles for your technicians as per your need and convenience.

You must either deactivate or delete any existing technicians or upgrade your pricing plan. Upgrading your pricing plan can add new technicians if the number of active technicians exceeds the maximum number permitted by each plan. Hexnode provides for easy and secure editing, deactivation and deletion of technicians. The number of technicians that can be assigned for each role type depends on your chosen pricing plan.

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The need for custom technician roles in Hexnode

Different organizations have different methods, tactics and strategies to manage and establish the access control workflow. Only some people need to know or have access to everything. The others work on a need-to-know basis, thus justifying the need for customizable technician roles along with the existing pre-defined technician roles such as:

• Super admin: first technician in the portal with complete control over the portal
• Admin: has full privileges and can access all functionalities across the portal
• Apps and Reports manager: can access all features related to the apps and reports tab and view the dashboard
• Reports manager: handles reports and the dashboard

Each organization has different groups of people who need access to different combinations of features across the portal. These combinations might be unique to each organization, so these can’t be pre-defined. Custom roles help you manage the access rights of different technicians within the Hexnode UEM portal. A more granular level of control of who accesses what, is what custom technician roles in Hexnode efficiently deliver.

How to customize roles for technicians in Hexnode?

Here are a few pointers to keep in mind while customizing roles for technicians in Hexnode:

• Determine the permissions you need (functionalities that can be viewed or modified)
• Create the required number of roles
• Assign each technician a role
• Identify the target endpoints for each technician and define the scope

Admins can later redefine the scope defined for a technician while assigning a role. So, what’s the main difference between the pre-defined and custom roles? For starters, pre-defined roles will have full scope across the portal. Only the super admin or admins can create custom roles and define the technician scope.

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Businesses are increasingly dependent on Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications for day-to-day operations. For example, organizations use an average of 110 SaaS apps for their internal processes, such as recruitment, webinars, file sharing, and HR management. Sure, it makes the digital space highly effective and efficient. But it also comes with some operational challenges that organizations frequently face.

IT teams are burdened with hours of manual management tasks to provision and de-provision accounts in today’s workplace to manage hundreds of SaaS apps. That’s not all. Organizations are vulnerable to security risks as employees can cause data breaches in seconds using third-party file-sharing apps. These are why having a SaaS Operations management team in your organization is essential.

SaaSOps includes a framework for dealing with all the challenges and complexities of SaaS adoption. It’s far more than just finding the right tools. SaaSOps framework includes:

• Optimizing the expenditure on applications.
• Automating user onboarding and offboarding.
• Securing SaaS data.

SaaSOps engineers make sure all these things happen without sacrificing user productivity. Another advantage that comes with SaaSOps adoption is a competitive business advantage. Businesses can stay ahead by quickly integrating innovative technology—like powerful new SaaS apps.

To implement SaaSOps practices in an organization, SaaSOps engineers use SaaS management platforms (SMPs). IT administrators use SMPs to control application policies and automate IT administrative duties. SaaSOps, when combined with a proper SMP, aid in creating a modern digital workplace that actively improves end-user productivity.

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The initial step to deploy the ZTE security stack involves using ZTNA to safeguard the mobile worker communications (which is a critical component of Zero Trust Edge). Businesses are continually looking for new ways to engage with their consumers, such as online and mobile applications. Individuals and devices must connect to company resources to execute tasks and conduct business operations. So, security professionals are increasingly implementing Zero Trust networking technologies to safely enable their remote workforce.

ZTE eliminates risk by authenticating every connection and activity. ZTE networks are naturally scalable because they are frequently deployed as an automated, cloud-based service. This drives down latency and improves the user experience. When completely implemented, enterprises may centrally manage, monitor, and evaluate the set of security and networking services contained inside ZTE solutions, whether cloud-based or housed in a remote location.

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One in 25 (4%) apps leak sensitive credentials. Well it’s not a lot, but if you consider the fact that an average person has 40 apps installed on their device, chances are you already have a malicious app shipping out your personal information. 

A common way users protect their mobile phones is by installing trusted anti-virus software.  

With the rise in the usage of BYOD devices, it is important for organizations to have a security policy and evaluate their mobile security. There was a 97% increase in personal use of managed devices last year. 

Mobile devices help in growing businesses and make a lot of previously desktop-focused jobs a lot easier and remote. So, having the best tools to keep the data within a company phone secure ensures success. One such important tool is UEM.  

A capable UEM like Hexnode can 

• Help you deploy a secure BYOD policy. 
• Monitor and get reports on mobile devices. 
• Manage and apply policies on the devices. 
• Configure different network security tools like VPN and APN. 

The post Why is Mobile Device Security important appeared first on Hexnode Blogs.

When the user searches on the browser, the domain of each requested website is checked against the whitelist. If the requested domain isn’t identified, the HTTP request is denied before it starts.

Web content filtering policy in Hexnode UEM helps to blacklist and whitelist websites. Whitelist is supported on macOS, iOS, and Android devices. To whitelist a website using Hexnode UEM,

1. Copy the URL of the websites that you want to whitelist.
   A gentle reminder that the URL should start with HTTP://, FTP://, or HTTPS://.
2. Create a whitelist policy. Whitelist policy is created by,
   Policy> New policy> Device OS> Security> Web content filtering> configure> select whitelist> paste the URL that you want to whitelist.
3. Select the target devices where you want to assign the policy.
4. Save the policy.

In macOS, the policy will be applied to the safari browser only. If you want to extend whitelisting to other websites, you can do it with the help of the App configurations policy. Create an XML file with a key attribute – URLBlocklist with the list of websites to restrict. Upload this file to generate app configurations for other browsers.

For iOS, only supervised iOS devices can be whitelisted.

Also, websites may have different versions, such as mobile version, desktop version, and many more. During whitelisting, each of them should be considered as a separate URL.

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A Trusted Platform Module chip, or TPM (version- 1.2 or later), is the most significant hardware element necessary to support BitLocker drive encryption. However, BitLocker can also be activated in devices without TPM version 1.2 or later. For this, the user has to insert an additional USB startup key. But this will be required every time to start the computer.

For installation, it is recommended to Install BitLocker on a machine that has a TPM version 1.2 or 2.0 and a TCG-compliant BIOS. Also, use of startup PIN during encryption is deemed more secure.

In case you forgot your PIN, or if you couldn’t unlock the contents normally, one could still recover it. You have the following choices for restoring drive access:

• The user can use their Microsoft Account online to type in the 48-digit recovery password.
• The drive can be unlocked using the credentials of a data recovery agent.
• The recovery password can be obtained from Active Directory Domain Services (ADDS) and used to open the drive by a domain administrator.

Finally, about the recommended encryption method. For operating system drive and fixed data drive, XTS-AES algorithm is best recommended. But for removable drives, AES CBC 128 or AES CBC 256 encryption method enable the users to access it on all devices.

Hexnode UEM supports BitLocker for Windows 10 Pro, Enterprise, and Education editions. Having understood what BitLocker drive encryption does, let’s now see why one should go for it.

BitLocker helps to

• Secure your confidential data stored in a laptop or stolen drives from PCs.
• Encrypt and secure data stored in external disks and USB drives.
• Prevent an attacker from accessing a company’s system disk. The system disk is often used as a source of trust to access other company devices.
• Secure data even in case of disk crash and facilitate safe disk disposal.

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This uprise in the number of cyber-attacks, calls for internet users to be more alert than ever. Securing your devices with healthy online practices is more important than ever. 

Unified Endpoint Management helps you in streamlining all the security requirements and lets you remotely manage all the devices in bulk. A UEM like Hexnode goes a long way in securing all the devices in the corporate setup.  

Features like remote monitoring, policy compliance, and restrictions are just some of the plethora of features that Hexnode offers.
Support to all the mainstream OS is a given in Hexnode and the ability to apply policies cohesively across all of them makes the job easier for IT admins. 

The shift from an offline to a digital-only setup can be challenging, but UEM’s like Hexnode make the job a lot easier. 

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