About

Fifty notes on device and endpoint management, written for whoever has to run a programme rather than sell one.

The position

Device management acts on a thing and affects a person, and on personal hardware the thing is not yours.

Organisations can usually do less than they think and see less than employees fear. The gap between those misunderstandings causes most of the resistance.

Make the limits structural rather than promised. A work profile is worth more than an assurance, because restraint fails eventually and platform design does not.

Who it is for

People running device programmes: IT, security, and whoever has to answer the questions employees actually ask.

What is deliberately absent

Platform and manufacturer names. Capability changes with each operating system release.

Adoption figures, which come from surveys commissioned by vendors.

And any suggestion that configuration removes the need to explain the programme to people.

Nothing here is legal advice

Rules on personal devices, monitoring, consultation and location differ substantially by jurisdiction and are moving. Take advice on your own position.

About this domain

This address previously carried an academic programme's website. The programme announced its own conclusion and the site is no longer here. There is a page about that.