MDM (mobile device management) has become a commodity technology over the years. It is also embarrassingly limited in its ability to secure devices and data on those devices. But it is, ironically, standardized by the rigid definition of what Apple will support.
So when security companies like Apperian develop their MAM (mobile application management) solutions to advance security beyond what Apple does, things can get messy.
The main technique in MAM is containerization or wrapping: The management system takes an app and “wraps” it inside a shell of code through which all access to the app must pass. This container (or “wrapper”) is a management point: It implements policy as set by the MAM system. Examples of policies that Apperian’s EASE can impose as policies on an app include a per-app passphrase, strong encryption of all data stored, secure copy/paste or a per-app VPN tunnel to the enterprise.
Many other companies implement similar sets of features in their MAM products. Some big names are getting into this business, including BlackBerry with BES 10 and Samsung with Knox. But there is no standard for the feature set and there is no binary standard for the container code, so there is no interoperability.