GeoFencing: Track and Fence 'them All

Now that's what you call a BREAK!!! Been busy but missed my blog and now  I'm back!!!

GeoFencing & GeoTracking, a feature set in the Enterprise Mobility domain that has slowly gained a lot of popularity amongst organisations which are security conscious and want to track where devices move

GeoFence "Was it an Under the Dome Concept" ??

GeoFencing & GeoTracking:

With intellectual property, personnel records, and other important corporate data now living on mobile devices, it is natural to worry about those devices and their data walking out the front door.

Geofencing lets administrators define safe areas or technically called as "fence" for mobile devices, and alerts administrators when a device leaves or enters that area. An MDM Solution can further apply policies on these devices that have been moved inside/outside of the fence.

At the same time GeoTracking allows organizations to track or locate devices at a click of a button. With growing technology tracking can now be done to the exact house or car that device is lying in.

GeoTracking

How does it work ?

GPS chip enables a device to run apps that use a person's physical location to provide specific information or services. For example, Google Maps provides driving directions from where you are to where you want to go, and Ola knows where your driver should pick you up.

GPS Satellites

Geolocation services are not reliant on GPS alone, however. They can also use Wi-Fi network proximity, cell-tower triangulation and even IP addresses, although GPS remains the most accurate method. When a GPS signal is weak or unavailable, the geolocation service can turn to one or more of the other methods, often in conjunction with GPS itself.

A common Use Case of a geofence can be as follows:

Scenario: 

Umbrella Corp is now following a BYOD approach. Employees bring their own devices and access corporate data on it. But a budding problem is the usage of unwanted apps by employees at working hours reducing productivity. This is where Geofence lands in.

Solution:

Admin John Luther has now set a GeoFence policy where he has cleverly defined a zone or fence according to their companies geographical fence. Any device when it enters the fence, that is office premises in our case, can only access the allowed set of apps. Once the device leave the fence users can access their other apps.

A Zone or Fence

Thats where GeoFence Solves the problem for Umbrella Corp. Although, GeoFence comes with its own set of shortcomings. Which can be:

• GeoFence works on GPS Positioning/Location Services available on the devices. As we all know GPS positioning for many countries is not that accurate to apply the fence accurately. Hence there will be some inaccuracies when it comes to triggering the rules. For example, Geofencing granular areas like a specific floor in a building is still not possible in India using only GPS.

• GeoFence using GPS is a Location Services dependant feature. Hence Location Services need to be enabled mostly always on these devices or an another set of policy needs to applied to kick it ON. And, with GPS enablement comes the most common issue of Battery Drainage.

Multiple other issues can crop up which are completely scenario based.

What can be other options to eradicate these shortcomings??

• Time Based Policies : A time based policy can always be a great alternative to GeoFencing policies but only in case of employee or end users who have a fixed working hours. Such policies kick in at defined intervals (for example, 9AM-5PM) and apply a defined action on the devices. Yes, this could be something very similar as to what we have seen in Active Directory.

AD Based Time Fencing

• With growing need  of identifying a device's exact location multiple MDM vendors have also integrated with Hardware Based Geolocators which provide a better result.