How to Keep Firmware Updates Connected to Your Mobile Device Management Tool
More and more businesses within the enterprise are going mobile-first, meaning that mobile device management (MDM) and enterprise mobility management (EMM) are more vital than ever. It’s important that employee devices are secure in order to protect your company’s corporate data and to ensure that your workers have access to business applications continuously. However, even if you have the ideal mobility management solution in place, firmware updates can often lead to issues.
In order to sidestep these problems, Samsung reportedly created an Enterprise Firmware Over-The-Air (E-FOTA) service. The service provides a tool for issues that arise from firmware updates.
“Partnering with MDM providers such as VMware — whose Airwatch solution provides granular control of mobile devices — E-FOTA will allow you to manage when firmware updates are pushed out to employee devices,” according to Samsung’s website.
The site went on to share the following ways that this type of solution can help your business:
- Selective Update
Utilizing selective updates means your admins can choose which firmware versions your corporate devices will use.
“For example, they may wish to choose to push out an “interim” firmware update that is one version back from the most recent if they are not yet ready for the latest OS,” Samsung reported.
Admins are also able to test internal enterprise apps after a firmware update prior to rolling it out to staff members. This often prevents interruption.
Selective updates are also useful if there are various device models used within your organization or if you’d like to plan updates by user group.
- Forced Update
If your IT or security department detects a threat that could potentially hurt the data or mobile devices within your organization, a forced update would be beneficial. It can be done at any time and means that the latest firmware updates will be pushed to your organization’s mobile devices through the air and end users won’t have to do a thing.
- Time Control
Time control is helpful for IT admins; they are able to set update times and allow users to continue working without any interruption.
According to Samsung, “E-FOTA augments mobile device management solutions so IT admins can fit firmware updates into their existing MDM/EMM service flows. Using the Samsung E-FOTA service, your IT admins can check version lists to first test the firmware versions they want to use. After checking stability, they can distribute policies and provide employees with optimized firmware updates.”
The Samsung E-FOTA service is an addition to MDM solutions and will help increase security for a business.
According to Samsung’s website, the service also provides the following benefits:
- Making firmware management possible directly within the existing MDM/EMM, without the need for a separate console.
- Pre-testing OS and firmware versions for optimized updates, ensuring IT stability.
- Easy maintenance and increased IT management efficiency by minimizing the number of enterprise mobile versions your company’s devices use.
It’s important to note that when managing mobile devices and a firmware update, the latest threat vectors, operations scheduling and compliance has to be considered. Samsung supports the following three options: Selective Update, Forced Update and Time Control updates of mobile device firmware.
