Mobile Device Management (MDM)
MDM is a system that manages, monitors, and secures mobile devices accessing corporate resources. It enforces policy on devices to ensure only compliant endpoints can access identity-protected applications and data.
# WHAT TEAMS RUN INTO
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BYOD complicates MDM enforcement. Personal devices access corporate resources but don't accept enrollment or policy enforcement, creating two categories of access with different security rules.
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MDM policies conflict with user expectations. A device that doesn't meet policy gets blocked from work apps, users circumvent the controls, and IT loses visibility.
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Device revocation doesn't correlate with identity revocation. Someone leaves, their user is deprovisioned, but their device still has cached tokens and access to cached data.
# WHY IT MATTERS
Device trust is inseparable from identity trust. A valid identity on a compromised device is still a compromised device. MDM is the bridge between identity systems and device security. When MDM doesn't work or users bypass it, identity decisions become meaningless — you are granting access based on identity, but not verifying the device executing that access.