On one hand, it’s so easy to take out your phone to glance through your emails and see if there are any pressing issues. Checking your calendar before heading out to work is mighty handy too.
But how do we keep as much flexibility as possible and still protect University data? Therein lies the challenge. Threats to our institutional data are now a constant occurrence. A way of harmonizing the convenience of mobile devices and accessing uOttawa data wherever you are is needed.
Here’s where Mobile Application Management (MAM)shines. It sets up a few protection barriers to enable us to continue checking info on the go.
Telfer School of Management jumped at the opportunity to lead the University in this area of IT security. For this phase of the initiative, the focus was on the support staff Telfer’s onboarding campaign took place between February 24 and April 1, 2022.
“Thank you gentlemen! Very interesting.”
Alexandre Bélanger
Part of the campaign included a ‘Come & Learn’ session. The engaged discussion that took place on March 23, 2022, showed the keen interest personnel have in maintaining access to the emails and calendar.
Thirty-five staff members peppered the Q & A meeting with questions that also raised concerns about those who use their personal devices and not University-owned ones. Reassurance was provided that there is no access to any personal mail accounts, files or information that they may have on their device.
Others wanted to know if they would continue receiving alerts of incoming emails if they did not use Mobile Application Management. And the answer is no, since you need MAM to be able to get any interaction with your uOttawa email account.
Personal security concerns were also addressed about PINs for personal devices: does enrolling into MAM mean that the University can change the PIN on your personal device? It was good for many to hear that the technical ability to do or read any of your personal information including your PIN is simply not possible. Technical staff only have the ability to do this for University-owned devices since it is a protection tactic to safeguard University data should the phone be lost or stolen.
Presenters gave a demonstration of everything that can and can’t be seen on the Mobile Application Management administrator console. This assuaged many concerns and highlighted to strong privacy protections to ensure the integrity of the initiative.
“Thanks, very helpful and reassuring.”
Rania Nasrallah
New sectors are being scheduled for the Mobile Application Management onboarding campaign throughout the 2022-2023 fiscal year. As it stands now, professors are excluded from this phase of the initiative and will be onboarded at a later date.
For those who opt not to enroll in MAM, they will no longer be able to access their uOttawa email or calendar on their mobile devices.