Wayne
Thompson

Importance of monitoring and managing data usage on corporate devices

Wayne Thompson

Nov 11, 2022

6 min read

Would you prefer spending your hard-earned money on things you don’t find necessary? Certainly not; nobody would. Organizations are no exception; they wouldn’t want their revenue being spent on things that are not related to them. So, they need to have an optimized plan for monitoring data usage on corporate devices and managing it effectively.

What is meant by monitoring data usage?

Data usage covers every data you download and upload. When the IT team monitors how the data is consumed or what data is consumed, they can get a clear picture if it was for work-related purposes. By doing so, IT admins may verify and alter data consumption limitations to ensure that employees are not consuming excessive data from the current data plan on things that do not benefit the organization.

For example, people in the workplace use their computers for purposes other than work. Therefore, you can better assure network availability if you can keep an eye on anything that might affect your speed.

What is the need to monitor and manage data usage?

Spending money on monitoring and management might cost you a fortune. That is a general assumption, and we are curious if that is true, but you need to take the necessary steps to avoid losing you a fortune. Some of these are:

  • Malware enters the system through user actions, like downloading malicious content or visiting corrupted websites.
  • The most considerable bandwidth-consuming websites are not always what the company had planned when it opened internet access to its employees. For example, a streaming video might cause issues such as sluggish access to office email. Furthermore, since the bandwidth would be utilized for non-work-related reasons, it would be a needless expenditure because it would be wasting your company’s resources on something unrelated. This is called bandwidth hogging.

Woman using corporate network for personal use.
Woman using corporate network for personal use.
 
  • Several distractions might cause a user to unintentionally waste a considerable portion of their work hours, even if they began with the intent of taking a quick glance at something. This impacts their individual productivity.
  • When individuals browse personal mail websites, file transfer sites, or try to download copyrighted items, compliance difficulties may arise.

Benefits of monitoring data usage on corporate devices

Employees have been known to share inappropriate materials as well as access and download unlawful, prohibited material from their corporate devices. This might result in legal obligations for your company, which is an unwanted expenditure. Furthermore, visiting these sites raises the likelihood of falling victim to phishing attempts, etc.

  • By monitoring data usage, you save your firm’s money in the long run.
  • A corporation can bring up the matter in team or company meetings without singling out any person by tracking the websites that account for most of the time spent online by employees.
  • Monitoring data usage may increase your ROI by supplying your firm with information about squandered productivity and irresponsible staff.
  • The information gathered by monitoring systems may apply to all corporate processes.
  • This data may give you insights into how much resources are lost in time and money, how that affects your ROI, the degree of effort required for specific jobs, and much more.
  • Monitoring data usage may protect your business from cyber threats.
  • Corporations can satisfy the requirements of any law or contractual commitments by developing a policy that forbids copyright or compliance issues and installing a technology that executes this policy.
  • Monitoring data helps to save bandwidth to have a speedier and more effective connection. Since most firms use the internet to execute operation activities, internet speed may make or break their success.

How to monitor and manage data usage?

To monitor as well as manage, IT admins have to set certain restrictions that would prevent users from breaching internet protocols.

Easier said than done…

No, it’s the other way around in this case. All you need is a UEM software solution.

Featured resource

Understanding Unified Endpoint Management (UEM)

Enterprises have come a long way from being just a collection of immobile devices. Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) solutions have made the whole device management process easier for enterprises.

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Using UEM solution to make things easier

Implementing Hexnode UEM for your managed devices helps you achieve this quickly and with minimum effort. It provides various features for managing your registered devices’ data usage. Some of them are:

  • Hexnode’s Network Data Usage Management policy can implement app-level limitations to track, monitor, and control per-app mobile data consumption. While you can monitor all apps for Android devices, in the case of iOS devices, only the apps that were installed using Hexnode UEM can be monitored.
  • Network usage rules for iOS devices allow the company to restrict the use of cellular data or roaming data by managed apps. This feature lets admins control needless data costs in the enterprise through devices.
  • In the devices enrolled, admins can remotely configure VPN settings using Hexnode to push a policy that would prompt users to activate the VPN on their devices.
  • You may also limit and monitor the real-time data use of particular apps on the devices.
  • It allows you to independently see and limit Wi-Fi, cellular, and total data consumption on the devices.
  • IT Admins can also block or allow apps and websites on corporate devices depending on the organization’s requirements.
  • Using Hexnode, admins will be able to establish data limitations, and you will be alerted via email if the limit is exceeded. Additionally, you will be able to monitor mobile data and Wi-Fi data use separately, allowing administrators to do comprehensive data analysis.
  • Hexnode UEM also has the provision of putting the device in a single app or multi-app kiosk mode that would restrict a user from opening any unauthorized application or website.
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Conclusion

It takes continuous effort to keep up with bandwidth data usage and to purchase larger pipes as demand increases. Improper management might result in data overages and, as a result, increased financing, especially if the devices have any data-hogging software. Using Hexnode UEM, monitoring the data usage and effectively managing it is much easier for the IT admins. It helps to maintain device compliancy. Furthermore, organizations can cut down costs and increase employee efficiency from this.

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Wayne Thompson

Product Evangelist @ Hexnode. Busy doing what looks like fun to me and work to others.

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