Mobile Device Management – Update

Around 10PM last night some of you may have noticed that your Concordia Google account you have added to your smartphone has prompted to accept and install some additional features to continue using your Concordia account on your smartphone. Back in June I had posted a blog entry about several incidents that provoked us to implement mobile device management solution on Concordia to protect both Concordia data as well as your personal data in the event your personal or Concordia owned mobile device is lost of compromised.

The original plan was to implement this in June, however due to some unforeseen events IT Services delayed the deployment of this until what was going to be Tuesday, due to a programming error deployment had taken place a couple days sooner.  We have be implemented and enforced a single policy to all Concordia employee accounts enabling the mobile device tracking for iOS and Android devices, specifically the “find my device” feature. This feature enables you, the device user, to locate your device via Android Device Manager which can be accessed via your computer or mobile device.

To reiterate: The Android Device Manager has several features. The main function enables you to locate your mobile device, an extended feature of this is the ability to cause your device to ring very loud regardless of whether the device is set to mute. This can be very helpful in finding a device that is hidden and possibly muted (possibly under a sofa cushion for example.) The second feature of the Android Device Manager is to give you the ability to remote wipe your device in the event that your device is lost and not recoverable (e.g. Your mobile device is stolen at the gym or dropped on a hiking trail.)

If you have any further questions, please direct them to helpdesk@concordia.ab.ca. I apologize for any inconvenience caused by this.

Justin Eifert
Network Administrator