Windows Phone 8.1 – full of security smarts

Windows Phone is one of the most secure smartphones on the market, thanks to these features:

Advanced Mobile Device Management (MDM) and Enhanced App management

Windows Phone 8.1 comes with a built-in MDM capabilities that help companies to manage both employee-owned (Bring Your Own Device) and company-owned devices for business use.

Enrolling to company services is now a lot easier. Employees can get their device configured in one go for business services such as Exchange, SharePoint and company Wi-Fi.

For this, your company’s IT department can configure account settings for Exchange and SharePoint, set VPN and Wi-Fi profiles, select which apps are installed, set configuration policies, and push all of them directly to your device using the MDM system.

If needed, as an organization you can also define a whitelist of allowed apps, preventing downloads of certain apps altogether.

S/MIME support for encrypted emails

Option to send encrypted and digitally signed email messages is now integrated to the Outlook client on your phone. This S/MIME function supported with Exchange Server can also be configured to your phone by the IT department.

This option to encrypt and digitally sign emails is a great way to prevent data leaks.

Enterprise VPN and Wi-Fi

Millions of organizations and people around the world make use of virtual private networks, VPNs. It’s a safe way to connect to other devices or services in a secure environment.

Windows Phone 8.1 supports both IPsec and SSL standards based VPN, helping you connect to your secure corporate network. IT department can configure which apps automatically trigger the VPN connection. This mean that employees don’t need to configure any settings themselves.

Remote wiping of company data

The same MDM system that’s in place to install or configure your phone remotely can also be used to remove company sensitive content and account data from it. The best part is that this enterprise wipe will leave your personal data untouched.

If you lose your phone, or if it’s stolen, it’s possible to remotely wipe the entire device. You can do this yourself via Windows Live service, or you can contact your IT department to do it for you.

We’ve only scratched the surface of the security features on Windows Phone 8.1. A more detailed Windows Phone 8.1 Security Overview can be found over at the Microsoft Download Centre.

What do you think of the security features, what do you need the most and what is the most commonly used in your organization? Feel free to share in the comments below!