back to article Enterprise smartphone buyers still pretty dopey about updates

Small businesses are dopey about the importance of regular patches and updates for their employees’ smartphones. And larger ones aren’t much better. While 80 per cent of enterprises think timely software updates are important, that number is lower amongst SMEs, where a third consider it an important factor in a purchasing …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Company I work for has a (written) policy that updates should be applied, there is no check in place to confirm they are though. We don't use any management software and there are no restrictions in place to stop the device being used in any specific way.

    We are 'Cyber Essentials' certified although I'm not confident that this would do anything for us ever, this probably goes against the certification..

    1. Andrew Dancy

      We've just gone through Cyber Essentials Plus and the assessor did check that all company mobiles were running the latest patched version of the OS (in our case iOS). He used a combination of reporting from our MDM system plus spot-checking a few devices at random.

      I can thoroughly recommend CE and CE+ as it's not too onerous and for once it seems to actually focus on real-world risks (e.g checking that your perimeter firewall actually blocks malicious URLs, your AV stops dodgy attachments, your users don't run as admin and you can't run downloaded exe files without a warning).

      The one that caused us some problems (and it's actually a good one) was although we'd patched systems up to date, there are some Microsoft patches that only actually apply if you make a registry change. Thus we failed as the scanning software correctly reported that some of the patches weren't live. The solution there was to push the relevant registry key via Group Policy.

      1. IneptAdept

        Dont run as Admin

        How does that work with Developers ?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    Around 90 per cent of firms now allow BYOB

    Good. I'm not that keen on the company's ale.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Here's the quandary where I work:

    What phones do we globally standardise on:

    - Go with Apple (V Expensive and blow the budgets) - but it gets patched for 3/4 years + and can be bought in every country we have staff in

    - Go with Samsung "S series" - Medium cost, and gets patched for 2 years if we are lucky and can be bought in every country we have staff in

    - Go with "Cheaper" Android - Low cost, patching may or may not happen for 2 years and supply is variable across various countries

    - Go with Pixel phones - We can't purchase those with carrier discount, or from some of our preferred carriers, but OTA patching is quick and continues for more than 2 years.

    So we want a phone that provides value over 2 years with guaranteed patching and is "cheap" alternatively a more expensive phone over 4 years with guaranteed patching for 4 years. (In line with what we do with laptops). None of the Android vendors meet that requirement, and even with Apple it is dubious (on the pricing front) if they meet that.

    Google have been trying to address the "patching challenge" with Android One and the Android Enterprise Recommended programmes, but the large global "enterprise" carriers don't even stock most of those phones...

    HMD (Nokia)'s research is basically to highlight that Nokia Android's get patched guaranteed for two years (and likely longer) rapidly and are cheaper than the alternatives. That's great, but we can't buy those globally from our carriers. Until Nokia get the phones carrier stocked globally (including USA) they are not going to get the market penetration in the enterprise that the phones likely deserve.

    1. James 51

      Have you considered Blackberries? I know the priv got EOL'd pretty soon but hopefully they've got the support side worked out with their suppliers now.

      1. MJI Silver badge

        Blackberries

        Mine has not grown properly since a wooden fence was put up next to it

        1. James 51
          Thumb Up

          Re: Blackberries

          Pots, then you can shift them around. Raspberries too.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "HMD (Nokia)'s research is basically to highlight that Nokia Android's get patched guaranteed for two years (and likely longer) rapidly and are cheaper than the alternatives. That's great, but we can't buy those globally from our carriers. "

      Wait till it came out that it's not the Nokia Android series but the Nokia 8110. Shirley, you can buy those globally and cheaply everywhere.

      /joke... wait, does it actually works in enterprise?

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Take Their Own Device

    At our place of work it seems people are given a work mobile and due to the voice and data bundle the company pays for, it ends up being loaded with WhatsApp and so on and being used as their personal mobile too. Which is great until you leave I suppose.

    I was given an unusable horrid Samsung A something, so I did it the other way around - put the SIM in my own dual SIM phone, put the unusable horrid Samsung A something in the drawer, installed an Exchange client which ignores instructions to wipe the phone and installed WhatsApp Business for the second SIM (as everyone's got WhatsApp anyway). Probably giving some here a heart attack, but then again the company doesn't seem to care, it doesn't use MDM software anyway.

    1. MJI Silver badge

      Re: Take Their Own Device

      >> unusable horrid Samsung A something

      I know how you feel, had one, now got another (still in box WILL be rooted)

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    That's funny

    As a company I work for bought the cheapest Androids they could get despite us warning they'd be shit and the updates would be poor.

    What happened? They were shit and updates eventually stopped as the version of Android they were on was no longer supported. Even funnier was the "cloud telephony" soft phone setup they have, the software for that was no longer supported on said phones.

    They've purchased new ones but again gone for the cheapest. Given up explaining why its a bad idea.

    This is the same company that gives their staff free rain over use of GSuite because they want move "Everything to the cloud". The policy on using GSuite at home is

    Your personal PC must have an AV.

    Your personal PC must have a login required for Windows (no mention of Linux or Apple)

    And that's it. No checks, nothing. The amount of times I've said, someone will at some point, if not already, steal loads of documents via GSuite and Google drive as you do no audits. And that at some point someone's personal PC will be stolen with all those company docs on it.

    Oh well.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Easy to explain

      A more expensive phone might cost less per year over their life, maybe even paying top dollar for iPhones if you require patches during that whole life. However even if you're accounting for it over say a four year life you still have to fork out the money up front. At least AFAIK carriers aren't going to finance phones for a business over that long of a period - if at all.

      Maybe Apple should consider such long term financing to help enterprise sales. Bundle Applecare, offer a way for some phones to be upgraded sooner (because execs won't want a several year old phone) have batteries replaced if needed and so forth. Basically Applecare Enterprise Upgrade program.

      Regardless, it is easy to go cheap because you spend a lot less up front and when the problems become apparent and they need to be replaced, well, its another budget year so you'll probably go cheap again. A "good" PHB would blame the problems on IT (if someone outside of IT makes the decision) or find a way to blame the carrier, or Google, or whoever - it won't be his/her fault that CheapDroid Q turned out to have terrible reliability, no updates after nine months, and so forth.

  6. MJI Silver badge

    I have free phones with work and

    they are lucky that the only reason I have not lump hammered them into behaving is that they are worth £60 at CEX.

    Cheap Samshits, all they do is force install Samshit shovelware. Very bad for stress levels.

    Seen my new one, Samshit again. That is going to be rooted before it is used so all the Samshit shovelware will not install.

    The current one was not too bad, just silly light up pretend buttons, until an OS update force installed Faecesbook and broke the camera*

    Start of the rot, then shovelware and camera breaking every few days. Dented from being thrown at a wall. My wife had to take a lump hammer off me once when some banking compulsaryware installed and started itself.

    * Added a silly button which was in the way which added stupid masks to the pictures, and also made the camera work the wrong way round. How can you compose a photo when the screen is facing away from you?

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Android Enterprise Recommended devices are also guaranteed to get at least one additional major OS update."

    Considering that lately Andriod has had a new version come out every year, makes this list of recommended devices questionable at best. And how are phone developers this incompetent? You can install WIn10 on even a Pentium 4 (assuming it supports the NX bit), and had microsoft not mandated that security requirement, even earlier systems. Yet they cant manage to make a phone which will support an OS 2 years after it was released, yet often these phones can cost as much a desktop.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Here we recently moved from *very* old Blackberries (mine was a ~9 year old Curve 8900) and BES to iPhone 6S and MobileIron. The iPhones are extremely locked down, and at the moment don't even have a browser. Which I completely agree with, it it's not essential for work stuff then you shouldn't have it.

    We did test with various Android (Samsung A8 amongst others maybe), but points against were the entire OS pacthing thing plus MobileIron on 'droid doesn't currently work as well as it should, eg completely missing emails.

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