Name: Dispelling MDM Myths to Improve Device Management
Uploaded: 2025-11-12T21:15:03.734Z
Duration: 1 h 15 min 4 s
Description: Dispelling MDM Myths to Improve Device Management

Transcript for "Dispelling MDM Myths to Improve Device Management": Hello, everybody. Thank you so much for being here. My name is Michael. I run content for Rippling IT. Great to have you here as always every week. So I'm gonna give everyone just another moment or two to find their way into the room. But while we're waiting on, the the stragglers to join us, I am gonna put up a quick poll to get us all started. We're here to do some myth busting today as you saw from the title, which I should probably advance to. Oh, come on, sleds. Are they really not working for me? Hold on. Technical difficulties. There we go. Okay. Great. So, yes, we're here to do some myth busting today, dispelling MDM myths to improve device management. But with that in mind, as you can see with the poll, we are asking everyone what their biggest concerns around implementing MDM are today. Is that employee privacy and perception of surveillance? Is that complexity of setup and management? Is that impact on device performance and user experience, compliance and legal requirements, or are none of those a great concern to you and you already have MDM implemented? Whatever your answer is to that, we would love to see it. So please feel free to share there. There will be a few more of those as we go along today. So definitely keep an eye out for those during the session. As I mentioned, and the reason you're here, we're gonna be talking about dispelling MDM myths to improve device management today. And we will be doing that with two of our most distinguished experts on the subject here at Rippling IT. Got our stalwart IT community manager who many of you will recognize if you have been to one of our webinars before. And that is our, that is Carter Francis, the beloved Carter Francis, as well as our equally beloved product lead for MDM here at Rippling IT, Zafar Khurani. So they're gonna do a great job explaining all the details. I'm just gonna cover a couple of quick housekeeping items before we get started. And that is number one, you'll be getting this full recording on demand later. So you can watch it later on your own time and refer back to anything you heard if there's something you wanna check back on. Number two, please feel free to use the chat and the q and a feature here in Goldcast while we are on today. We will try and get to everything we can during this session. We'll also save a couple minutes at the end for q and a with Carter. So please let us know what's on your mind. Anything we don't get to in that time, we will follow-up later by email. But you will get an answer one way or another, so please feel free to ask whatever occurs to you. Finally, there is a bunch of related content that we have attached to this session, here in Goldcast. You'll find links under the, docs part of the side panel. Read some of the free guides we've published. Check out our brand new IT maturity matrix. Maybe check out the free MDM migration guide. There are many, many super helpful resources that we wanna point you to there as well. And, yeah, honestly, that's about it from my end. So, with that all said, I will go ahead and bring in Carter and Zofar to take it from here. So thank you, guys. I will see you at the end of the talk, and I will be in the chat in the meantime. So, hit us up with any questions, and we will get you some answers. Alright. Howdy, everybody. Welcome to today's session, dispelling MDM myths to improve device management. I'm Carter Francis. I'm IT community manager here at Rippling. I'm super excited you could all join us today. We're gonna be talking about one of the most common sources of tension in IT, which is how to secure company data without making employees feel like they're being watched. So help us unpack that. I'm joined by Zafar Karini, our product lead for MDM. Zafar, thank you so much for being here. Yeah. No. Thanks, Carter. And and you're you're right. MDM, MDM can sound intimidating. So let's dive in. Yeah. I think before we dive too hard into details, I mean, what do you think drives some of this hesitation around, like, someone who's never rolled out MDM or an organization that's never rolled it out before? You know, I I I think a lot of it just comes from old perceptions of device management as just being something that's intrusive. Right? Something that's on your machine. Is it what is it doing? Is it monitoring me? Like, all these questions come up. Yeah. But, you know, the reality is that modern MDM is built around really protecting company data. That's the goal while preserving employee privacy. It is really not about controlling, you know, an employee. It's it's about it's about confidence. It's about keeping the company safe, keeping the employees safe, and ensuring the employees productive. Do you think remote and hybrid work kinda changes any of those perceptions or kinda forces stuff to the to the top of the funnel, so to speak? Yeah. You know, I I it was a huge shift, right, in in 2020. I think remote and hybrid work have completely reframed how people think about MDM. Because, you know, at the before COVID, you know, everyone kinda suddenly, you know, people working in the office, people were in the office, there was an I IT was right there. It kinda felt a little bit imposed, like, you know, there's this device, there's some there's some software on there. You know, it's it's imposed by the company, and and maybe it felt kinda restrictive. You you know, it has to be there. There's nothing you can do about it. But But now all of a sudden, when everyone had to work from anywhere, you know, security couldn't just live inside the office anymore, and employees saw firsthand that, you know, I think device management is not really about surveillance. It's about keeping the data secure without slowing them down. And that became so clear when and all of a sudden, if you have a problem or, you know, if if you need, you know, access to your tools, you need access to them safely, you know, IT isn't right there. You're now remote. You know, you're not at you're not at the office. And, you know, MDM is ensuring that that's the case. And so I think it's more of a layer of trust, and I think people have are now thinking about it as such. That is there to make to ensure that you can work safely from anywhere and still be really productive. That year and when all when all that kind of big shift happened, I thought a lot about, folks who are still, like, needing on prem 80 to, like, talk to machines and how many machines probably, like, were totally off the reservation for a super long time. So, yeah, it's kinda kind of a big shift there. Right. Well, I think that gives us kind of a good foundation. So let's start maybe by talking about, one of the biggest concerns that we hear when we talk to folks who are kinda, you know, looking at all this for the very first time, and that's privacy and intrusiveness. You know, people hear device management, and they assume IT is gonna, like, have all access to every single piece of personal data that, you you know, whether it's on their machine or maybe it's on their home network or something like that, or that IT wants to, like, spy on folks. I mean, any any comments on that, why that fear comes up so often with with people? Yeah. So the first thing I'll say is acknowledge that, yes, that is, like, the number one, you know, concern or or fear that I hear when it comes to MDM. And it's completely fair for employees to be cautious. Right? Like Yeah. You know, especially if you don't know too much about what the software is, I'd feel that way too. I'd be concerned. And I think when when employees hear that software is being installed on their phones, you know, for example, they probably worry about personal photos, messages, location data. But the truth is that modern MDM platforms don't touch that information. You know, that's really not what companies are interested in. That's not what MDM vendors are interested in pulling. Really, you know, folks are companies are managing work, managing devices with work profiles, business apps, company data. IT really, you know, wants to wants to control the security of the company data while leaving everything personal untouched. It's not about controlling the employee or, like, you know, the whole machine from that perspective. It's about making sure the company data stays secure. And I think that the most successful IT teams I've seen are those that explain this clearly. And I think once employees know that their privacy is protected, then adoption becomes much easier. Yeah. Any tips there then for, like, maybe the IT team has bought in or, like, pieces of the IT team have bought in, but, like, leadership or, like, the broader employee base, like, still has concerns? Do you have any tips on kinda like Yeah. Well, I can talk about what I've seen and, the things that I've seen that that work well. You know, before I dive into that, you know, I'll just mention that trust really where does trust come from? It really comes from being transparent and also being empathetic. And so I think I think the most effective IT teams don't just roll out MDM. Right? They take time to explain it, what it is, why they need it. Yeah. And they show employees what's actually being managed. What data can the company see? What data can can they not see? Why those protections matter? Right? And so, you know, getting into the how, I've seen things that I've seen that work well. I've seen some IT teams host short privacy briefings. I've seen them share visual guides that spell out the difference between, you know, what is work data? What is personal data? I've seen, you know, really good, clear FAQs and internal posts, that address these common fears directly. It's best to address these things directly, not to shy away from it, but be very clear and open about it. Yeah. You know, you can literally have an FAQ that says, can IT read your messages? Can IT access your photos? Right? Really directly addressing the deep fears and concerns that employees may have. And I think, you know, that then leads to, you know, when employees really understand that MDM is actually protecting them, not monitoring them, then they're far more likely to embrace it. So I I think it's really about shifting that conversation from control to confidence and trust. Yeah. Except I mean, it's almost like not even a part of an unacceptable use policy, but, like, an additional, like you said, fact or document that I right. Because who reads the acceptable use policy? Let's be real. Like, I know that we're all supposed to do that. And I and and and, you know, we skim through it and maybe just hit accept accept. You know? But, like, you know, I think we're trained as employees to just be like, oh, yeah. This is something I have to do. Let me just, like, get to it really quickly. But if the IT team actually take makes an effort to produce something that really addresses my direct questions that are in my head, I'm much more likely to read that and engage with it. Yeah. For sure. So once employees and IT staff kinda understand what what is actually going on, the next logical question is kind of, like, how do we protect company data? So maybe let's kinda, like, shift into that data security part of the conversation. I mean, it seems it should always be top of mind for all IT leaders, but there's still skepticism about, you know, if MDM is going to be something that improves data security at the at the end of the day. Any kind of comments there to kinda quell those fears? Well, so in terms of what I've seen, security is always the first reason companies explore MDM. Right? They that's that's the that's the reason. Sometimes it's because, you know, folks are, you know, looking to get their SOC two audit. But even if not, security is really the first reason. And the challenge is, you know, doing that without creating friction. Right? So, like, MDM, they they enforce policies automatically so you don't have to rely on manual checks. If a device is lost, you can remotely wipe it, but only the you know, if an employee's laptop is out of date, you know, you can block access to sensitive apps until it's updated. And these these are small, like, can automate its controls, really, but they prevent, like, mass security incidents. So this myth that MDM is risky or complicated, I think it really comes from older systems, to be honest. Yeah. I I agree. Like, monitors very lightweight. They're very sick they're secure by design. They have, like, default templates. It's really easy to roll out and just implement. You shouldn't have to know so much about the MDM technology itself. In fact, you shouldn't really have to know anything. Yeah. The the plug and play and ease of rollout is, like, changed so much over the last decade. I I I'm stoked on it. When we talk about that then, I mean, it goes further than security, and I feel like the buy in that we've talked about earlier, it kinda comes down to, like, if you can use MDM to, like, help your employees and benefit their day to day. I mean, those possibilities are surely there too, like deploying software or other examples you might have. Yeah. You know, deploying software, making sure the device is encrypted. You know, even as an employee, I don't want, like, my company if I lose the device, I personally don't want the the data to get, like, meet somewhere. Like, I I also care about sometimes Sometimes we often say, like, security and usability. Security, IT cares about security and usability. Employee has heard about usability. But as an employee, I care about security too. I just haven't been I just need to be told why it matters. I need to be like it needs to be explained to me. Mhmm. And then the other thing is just, like, on day one, it's really nice to get a machine. It's not just about the software. It's also just about being able like, you know, ideally, when I get my machine, then I can log in immediately. I mean, ideally, I can just log in with my, IDP credentials, and I don't have to, like, you know it's just, like, it's set up and good to go right from day one. It's not just about the software that I use. It's also about how I log in to the machine. Yeah. And, and and that ease of access, I think, is really important too. Totally. So So that covers kinda security and a a bit of, like, you know, end user benefits. But let's talk about, like, you know, the ownership and management of the computer when MDM is in place. We hear sometimes you know, I'll talk to folks who have continued to run everything on prem, for example, and they're nervous about, like, giving up control to a third party system, which, you know, doesn't really speak the whole truth of the situation. Where where do you think that concern comes from? You know, I actually think it's the opposite. And I think it just may take some time for people to realize, that that's the case. Because MDM is not about giving up control to the vendor. It's about putting control in the hands of the IT team. And it gives it's a tool that gives you control. It's not a tool that takes away control. And but that and by the way, in an earlier, you know, kind of conversation that we were just talking about, I was talking about it's not about control. What I meant is it's not about controlling employees. Right? Here, like, the IT team has control over their data security. Right? That's the piece that that that, you know, you do wanna give IT, control over. And so MDM gives you complete sorry. Were you gonna say something? No. I was just, just thinking about, like, the the perception of, like, this lack of flexibility and how I've talked to a lot of people over the past few years who come into the conversation thinking that it's gonna be a one size fits all situation. And it's like, no, man. You can configure this how your organization wants to use it. Right? Like That's right. It's about giving you the building blocks. And, of course, then the building blocks, you know, you know, really great vendors out there have provided defaults and templates that use the building blocks to push whatever policy or whatnot you want, but you can customize it. Build build anything custom you want. We are giving you the building blocks. You have the control to do that. Right? And MDM gives you complete visibility across the entire device ecosystem. So you can enforce the exact security policies you want. You could revoke access at any time. You could wipe data at any time. These are things that you can do with MDM, and it could be as customizable as you'd like it to. Right? The platform doesn't dictate how you operate. It simply makes these things, like enforcement, consistent and scalable. And so instead of managing devices one by one, you define your rules once, either using, like, the default templates that, you know, several of these MDM vendors provide or by creating your own custom ones and then applying them everywhere. I would say that that is actually real control. Yeah. Yeah. Removing get like, it just removes guesswork from everything to, like, what devices are even out there deployed to, like, how they're managed from top to bottom. I mean, I I remember my pre MDM days and, like, it was such, you know, a crapshoot on exactly Right. What a device might be doing. Yeah. And and that's scary. Right? I would actually say that is the illusion of control because that isn't actually not having control, but kind of maybe feeling like you do. And I I really think these MD an MDM tool actually does give you far more control over your own security posture. Yeah. Totally agree. I think that kinda segues us perfectly into the idea of, like, compliance and, like, legal concerns and, like, why people get compliant or, you know, maybe they're not even seeking certifications, but they have, like, a set of in house compliance laws that they've made for their own organization. I mean, I have never talked to to a company or an org that doesn't feel that way, especially with privacy regulations like GDPR or, like, if they're having to pursue a SOC two for, like, you know, generating a bit larger customer base or reaching certain kinds of customers. So, like, how does MDM help maybe in those specific situations where, like, you're having to really sort of get certified and you're having to to fulfill these complicated compliance requests. Yeah. For MDM is extremely helpful for that. Right? Because, I mean, you're right. Regulatory compliance can be very stressful for IT leaders. You have to prove that devices are secure, that they're encrypted, they're up to date. With an MDN, that simple it you simplify the entire process. Right? Because you can generate reports that show which devices meet policy standards, which do not. You can you can prove encryption, you know, password compliance, patch levels without manually doing it. I mean, so I think some you're right that some people worry that MDM increases legal exposure, but, actually, it's completely the opposite. It reduces it. Right? Because you it is giving you the tools to not only ensure that devices are compliant, but it also gives you the tools to report on the fact that your devices are compliant. So I I, you know, I I think it's it's it's I think it's a must have from a compliance, and legal perspective. Yeah. I agree. I every once in a while, I'll have someone someone, you know, get in the nitty gritty of the the language for, like, a SOC two cert. Right? And they're like, well, we don't have to have MDM to to do this. And it's like, it might you might as well have to have one, in my opinion. Like, it it's it just easily I think the idea is not to do it on an MDM is, is a world of pain. Yeah. It's like so it so needlessly complicates everything. Right. Totally. Well, I mean, directly related to that, Rippling's had some hefty compliance certs that we've met, and we've grown so drastically over the last several years, specifically with SOC two or ISO 2,701. You have any examples being kind of in the in the mid middle of all that, like, the coolest or best ways that we used stuff to to Well, look. Like, I was asked for data. Right? I was asked for data for that, for for for these audits. And and, you know, I was able to do it. I were able to provide that data really quickly and really easily Yeah. Because it's all centralized in the device's app in Rippling. And moreover, there were several reports that I needed to provide. And that's so easy in Rippling because, you know, you can navigate to the reports tool, and you can access any data you need. And the nice thing about that reports tool, and and Rippling is that the you can access not only the device data, but also the relevant employee data. So I was able to tie the device data with the employee data really easily into a single sets single set of reports, that was then extremely helpful, for for our own audits. And I think doing that, you can you can use another MDM vendor for sure, in order to kinda produce the the reports required from a device perspective. But I think joining that data with the HR data here, was the the the the special thing that, the secret sauce, I guess, that that, I was able to do with Rippling, that cut down my workload in terms of providing that kind of reporting drastically. Yeah. I'd I had a, like, a ten or eleven month stretch a couple years back where I was having to, like, amass MDM data about all this specific stuff, and it was you know, I was in more than one MDM and had a separate identity tool. And just generating those reports, that was, like, when I first, you know, became part of Rippling. It was, like, one of the biggest things. I was like, oh my gosh. That's like a button to keep shared out with, like, my CISO perpetually this report that I can keep live, and it has literally everything they need as opposed to jumping around with all the different stuff. And give you a really simple example. Like, one of the reports, really simple one, was just, like, which devices are encrypted and meet password policies. You know, one report that had every single device that we manage, was on that. What it was was all that was needed. And in that report, we also need to show who the device is assigned to. Bricklink already has all that information. So it's literally literally just creating one report. It took less than a few minutes, and that report was done and ready to go. So Right on. Cool stuff. Balancing then security and usability, goes back a little bit to what we talked about with flexibility, I think, but I I I think this touches on kind of, like, the the change in both, like, the way MDM protocols and the technology exist there, but also, like, how how, you know, systems themselves have evolved over the last couple decades. People assume that, like, because you've got all this security or, like, good policies that are, like, controlling the device in a way that, you know, benefits the users and the org, that they're gonna get bogged down by, like they're gonna be slower because there's a software on here or that it's gonna, you know, not let them do their jobs the way that they need to. Any comments there about kind of, like, usability? You know, I also think that comes from the past. I think that used to be true. You know, it used to be the case that if you wanted to have that kind of security on these machines, you had to, like, bog it down with all the software that was tracking it, like, you know, all these things, and it was a lot of taking a lot of CPU and RAM, and it was harming usability. That was true. But that's just not the case anymore. Right? With modern MDM protocols, it's you know, and even with kind of modern software tools for for agents that are running on the machine, they're using a fraction of the CPU. You know, modern MDM protocols are, like, barely using it at all. Right. And so, you know, you can actually have a device that's very secure without the employee even really noticing that anything is on there. Yeah. I I think there's a general misconception of, like, how policies work and when they're enacted and when they're when when they get on a device, like, what that actually is doing. Right? Right. And it's like a very small little like, for the policy perspective, it's a very small file that lives on the machine, and it just enforces some settings. It's almost it's barely detectable, quite literally. And and the way it gets on the machine, especially if you're using these modern MDM protocols, like, let's look at Apple's MDM protocol as an example. It's just pushed directly from Apple servers directly to the machine, and it just that's it. It lives there. It's such a small file. It's, like, barely noticeable. It's it's, you know, you could download, you know, I don't know, a piece of music onto your, or a video file onto your machine. That would be, like, a thousand times more noticeable than than, you know, any of these policies. Yeah. I feel like I feel like some of the people I've talked to who have those concerns, like, also probably have a 150 Chrome windows open. And it's like, I mean, maybe your computer is slow for different reasons. Cool. Well, I think where are we here? I you know, if you could give one piece of advice to an IT leader who's either on the fence or a bit hesitant about all this, is there any any kind of single thing you'd summarize with? Well, you know, let's see. There's two kind of signals that tell you if you're getting it right. Right? There's, like, kind of the user behavior, like, how are your employees reacting to the the what you've rolled out, and then perhaps, like, audit outcomes. So that that's probably, like, the easiest way to think about the security piece. And so, you know, if your help desk isn't flooded with device lockout or access complaints and employees are following, you know, any of these update prompts naturally for for operating system updates, you're probably striking a good balance. And then, likewise, if, like, compliance reports and policy audits show consistent adherence without, you know, constant intervention, you're probably doing things right. And so, like, that's one way to kinda monitor how am I doing. And some some teams go further. They even survey employees after rollout. They ask, you know, how did the security tool affect your day to day? And when users say you want it to be invisible. Right? When users say, oh, I didn't really notice it. Like, of course, they have to you know, they may have had to do something to get the thing on their machine, but, but other than that, if they're like, I don't really notice it, that's a huge win. Right? It it basically means that security has become invisible, and that is the hallmark of a healthy MDM setup. Yeah. Totally. I think from the perspective of the IT admin or the IT team themselves, we're kind of in a new world where you're not evaluating well, maybe some people are, but, like, you don't have to be evaluating multiple MDM tools to, like, say, oh, I need to roll out MDM, so I have to have, like, one for the Macs and one for the PCs and one for the iOS stuff. Like, that is certainly a different world in our scenario, right, where you're you're only evaluating potentially one tool for all that. It makes it even more invisible, for the employee. And, of course, like, you know, for the admin, you know, much easier to roll out. So yeah. I agree. Yeah. I've always kinda I've always liked the idea that under under a rippling managed MDM world, if I were suddenly to have to have a PC versus a Mac, the shift would be kind of totally no consequence to me or or the IT world. Like, it's just And we've had those situations occur, you know, at at Rippling itself, at our company, and I'm sure this has occurred many times for other folks too. You know, obviously, it's not the most common thing, but it does happen, you know, where, you know, maybe, you know, folks on the finance team just, you know, they need a PC for, for whatever reason, or, you know, some folks start there and they're like, you know what? I actually just really prefer Macs. I wanna I wanna I wanna use the Mac. And and that's that's happened, and and it's been quite seamless for us to make those changes. Yeah. I was in a world where one time where there was, like, four PCs that I had to manage with AirWatch and then 800 Macs that I was doing with something else. And it's like, what am I doing, like, with these five machines? It's like Yeah. Cool. Well, maybe last question to you would be, like, for a very first step, someone who's who's looking at this really for the very first time, is there any, like, starting place, like, looking at their current inventory? Or, like, what about a tool they should, you know, really focus on? I think it's just all about, you know, starting small and building trust. You know, when you're thinking about rolling out an MDM, pick one department. Right? Or pick a group of pilot users and roll it out in a controlled way. And then pair that with really clear communication. Right? Explain what's being managed, what isn't, why it matters. We talked about that earlier in the segment. And then you can use that pilot to then fine tune your policies, gather feedback. And once employees see that the MDM isn't slowing them down or invading their privacy and that they, you know, kind of realize that, oh, like, my fears are are unfounded. And then, also, once IT sees the visibility that it provides, you'll just have natural momentum for wider adoption. They'll try and do it all at once. Right? Because, you know, at the end of the day, adoption is critical. And even if you are you know, it's clear in your head why the benefits, it may not be clear in everybody else's heads. And so and so I'd recommend doing that. And then in terms of, like, choosing a tool, I think it really comes down to what tool is going to, really minimize the amount of busy work you have to do. Because, like, yes, this is about securing your devices, but it's also about doing it without causing in in immense amounts of burden on. Right? Ideally, you roll out just one tool. Right? Ideally, the tool has, like, you know, defaults that you can use or tweak from there. Yeah. Ideally, the tool has automations that just make it much easier for you to make sure the environment is secure. And then, ideally, the tool has ways for employees to, to to get on employee devices without really, any, intrusiveness. Yeah. So I think those are those are key things to keep in mind. Yeah. I think if it becomes, like, an additional full time job, you're you're doing it wrong. Right? Yeah. Like It it really shouldn't be. It should be something that you don't have to, I mean, it's it's some some amount of work to set things up. Even these, like, you know, good and then vendor will have defaults that you can, you know, make the setup faster. But then once you set it up, it should just work. Right. Perfect. Well, I think that's a great perspective. I'd you know, the big message here, folks, is that MDM is not about surveillance and that and modern MDM protocols are kinda designed the way they are to really benefit end users as well as the, the administrators. So, it's about protecting data. It's about building trust, like Zafar said, and giving IT leaders, really the confidence they need to have when performing those audits, the, you know, ever management of their computers and keeping things unlocked during change management. Any final any final comments, Safar? No. I mean, I I mean, look, I I, I understand why, people may have some trepidation when it comes to MDM. The first time I learned about MDM, I also kind of had similar questions and concerns. And I think it's just a matter of kind of, you know you know, educating yourself about it, giving it a try, letting, letting yourself, let letting yourself be, you know, embrace I guess what I'm trying to say is embracing the the fact that, you know, hey, MDM is here to help, not not to be a a nuisance. Yeah. I think once once you get kind of more in that mental, you know, burden, if you will, that's when, you kinda really see the benefits. I totally agree. Well, thank you again for joining us today's offer. Thanks to everyone who attended. If you wanna learn more about Rippling's approach to our modern MDM world, see a live demo. You can visit our website, reach out to our team directly. You can even kick off a self trial. So, really, folks, until next time, stay secure, stay connected, have fun, have a great rest of your day. Thanks. Bye bye. Cheers. Okay. Thank you so much to everyone who came out today to watch and engage with us. I'm gonna switch my slides around here to meet what we are now doing. So Carter is kindly sticking around to answer a couple of the questions we had in chat as promised. So, what I will do, Carter, if it's cool with these, I'll just kinda, like, run through these radio show mailbag style and have you weigh in. Yeah. That work? Sounds great. I saw a few at the very end, but I can't multitask as. as. well as. I will make myself responsible for that. Don't worry about it. Alright. So. let's start with I'll just go in order here chronologically for the most part. So there were two kind of related questions off the top, one from Ramesh and one from Lauren. I won't read them verbatim because they're different a little, but, like, really asking about BYOD and how that plays with MDM. Could you speak to that first? Yeah. It comes up a lot in conversations we have with all different kinds and sizes of of organizations. You know, I'm of the mindset that if I if I'm an IT admin at a place, I definitely want folks to have a company owned device, be it a mobile device or or an actual computer or a desktop. I I want it to be the corporate device so that if I need to wipe that device or I need to like quarantine it or take it off the network or, you know, touch it in any way, then when it comes down to it, like, we we need to be able to do that. We wanna be able to do that. There are containerization options in Rippling for, mobile devices. So like an iOS and iPadOS, you can have some of that division. But I definitely, like, strongly recommend, like, buying a company device for for everybody you can. And if you can't, you do have the options in Rippling to, like, separate out policies based on attributes. So you could make either a custom attribute and say, if this person has a BYOD device, they're gonna get this set of policies. Maybe they're less restrictive or more restrictive or more specific in a certain way. But you could even do that and say all contractors are bringing their own device, so contractors are gonna be treated this way. Brenna. Yeah. Thanks, Carter. I've and, Ruma, Ash, Lauren, hope you found that helpful, of course. So let's move on to one from a one from Peter here. He writes, I have a desktop team that's stuck in legacy provisioning processes and it's difficult to get them to change. Do you have any advice for a team slash person personnel dynamic to get them to shift to modern MDM management processes? I'd be curious what the most complicated thing they're doing now is. Like, what what is the thing that, like, makes them really like their legacy situation? And then kind of decide how you can do that with MDM because I haven't come across something that, like, you know, I used to use Microsoft, imaging tools, and I used to, like, have monolithic imaging as, like, a a real long term solution. But with modern day hardware, you're gonna keep running into more and more obstacles with that kind of stuff, especially if you have a remote workforce at all. Like, maybe you don't right now, but suddenly hire someone remote and all of that kind of gets thrown in in in a different kind of way. So, I would definitely urge you to kind of like go bit by bit and really know what their legacy provisioning entails, and then you can really make a one to one, world with with any MD MDM out there. Great. I will let's let's take this one from Tim here. He writes, how do you monitor device location to recover a lost device without having access to an employee location at all times? He continues to elaborate on why that would be a point of concern, but I wonder if you can address. I. think I mean, I think it's important to point out that we're not, like, track like, we're not and any any MDM that, you know, is is is what you're looking at is not gonna be, like, tracking specific locations. Now you can sometimes narrow down where a device is if you know the network or if you know what network it's hopping on. I've definitely had someone, like, lose a device and then I found it in an outdoor patio section of an office I worked at because I knew that that's the network it pinged into. But we don't we don't have any, like, tracking. You know, there's no, like, this is what street this computer is on. Right. So in that kind of scenario, you're not you're not tracking your employees using certainly using Ripley. Good. Good. Good. Okay. This one's from Paul. Slightly different gear here. But how can MDM champions challenge the perception that MDM is sometimes, parentheses simplistically, seen as a legacy technology, especially with its ongoing evolution into UEM? Any thoughts there? Semantics. I don't know. Yeah. I guess. No. I don't know. Like, I I I think a lot of Rippling customers roll out SentinelOne as part of Rippling. Like, you can you can bundle a SentinelOne core or complete offering and license it, deploy it, and monitor it through Rippling. So a lot a lot of our customers do that. Just it takes down your licensing efforts. It makes everything visible in the exact same spot. So if a quarantine needs to happen or you're getting messages from SentinelOne, you can action within Rippling. I I think that's, you know, an evolution of a standard MDM. So it's just some it's kind of like semantics to me at the end of the day. I hear you on that. I think honestly, I think that's the end of our list. So I I may let you go here a minute or two early, Carter, if you have I believe I see some some dogs in the background there who. may be up. been run they've been running around. I don't know if anybody saw them. I hear them barking, so they're losing their minds. It was a really, pleasure talking to you all today. Definitely always love getting to see Zoffer. I used to meet with him every week and don't get to see him quite as often these days. So, y'all have a good one. Thanks, Michael. Yeah. You got it. Cheers. Thank you. Bye. Alright. Okay. Cool. So, oh, boy. I haven't signed out. Oh, no. Hold on. Well, I don't need my I don't need my notes for this part, so let's keep moving here. What I do wanna do before I let everyone go, is quickly talk about the webinar that we will be putting on the same time next week. We're gonna take the following week off for Thanksgiving. But on November 19, really cool session, covering all things device life cycle management. And we wanted to do this session in large part because we just went live with launching a new feature called device buyback today. And that again is a new feature that will allow Rippling IT customers to sell those old laptops that are just gathering dust back to Rippling in exchange for money off of their Rippling subscription. So much of the reason that we're so excited about this launch and is because we've heard from from so many of our customers as well as just the IT community in general that this is a huge and recurring problem, the proliferation of devices that you don't know what to do with. So we're hoping that this can really make a difference in solving that problem for people. That's always our hope when we launch anything. So we're hoping that this can really this can do that and, would love if you guys would would come out and join us for that session next week. We'll have Carter back with us as well as software's counterpart in, inventory management. That's, our product lead for IBM. His name is Pablo Hernandez. He is also great. And they're gonna walk you through all the cool details there. So, that is it for next week. I only have a couple minutes to get through my pitch here, so I will try and make this quick. But really quickly, this is how we at Rippling IT kinda this is our sense of the market and what we think we can help you help you do. So to start with and there's a better version of this that is the IT maturity matrix in the docs section in Gold in Goldcast if you wanna go check that out. This is a pretty basic summation of how we have observed IT operations to typically scale. You start out manual. You start looping in some point solutions to take on some of that work. We believe quite firmly that it's really this third bar that that matters the most. And there is a lot of power in end to end automation specifically, not automation in one tool that then must be supplemented with automations in another tool because that process, connecting those tools, can be very manual in and of itself and to the extent where you're not really saving much time at all. We see a lot of this in the IT and security market because as many of you are no doubt aware, we have a lot of point solutions in this space, covering a great many things. This slide does not nearly cover everything. So just the acronyms alone get daunting pretty quick. Again, speeding through this, but the the thesis behind Rippling IT from the very beginning, has been bringing as much of that as we can into a singular system built around a singular unified data architecture that allows for that end to end automation that that we're talking about, and really simply just empowers IT teams to do more, across identity and access, device management and inventory management, the three main categories you see here. There's a lot that we can help you do. And we connect all of those elements through, again, the unified data architecture I mentioned because all of our products are built on employee data, and they run on that employee data. And that is what makes them so powerful. So, that all said, let's get down to the real business. I did hear, not here, but read a couple people asking about this in the chat. So I am very pleased to announce that we do have a winner, for our our $500 gift card giveaway. And that is Daniel, from Marfy. Daniel, Meditosh. I apologize if I'm mispronouncing your last name there or the name of your company, in fact, as super clear to me. So sorry if I messed that up. But to make you feel better, $500 in gift card form coming your way. Congrats, Daniel. Thank you for joining us today. And, of course, thank you to everyone else for joining us today. And with my remaining ninety seconds record time, I will close today with another offer, which is just that if you are one of the first five people to book and attend a demo for Rippling IT, take a look at what this can look like in your own environment and what we can help you with. We will happily give you a nice smooth bottle of Blanton's single barrel bourbon for your time. So that's fun. You can crack that open, preferably after the demo, but you do you. I will leave it there. So thank you again to everyone who stuck with us for the whole time today. Please do let us know if there's anything we can help with. That's what we're here for. But, thanks for coming, and we hope to see you again soon. So till then, take care. Thank you very, very much. And, yeah. Have a good one.