Avoid These Potential Security Dangers of Tablet Kiosks
Tablets are driving a major shift in the way customers interact with content—and beginning to make their way into new use cases for business. Tablet kiosks are appearing everywhere; businesses want to connect and engage with their customers in cost-effective, beautiful ways. They can be set up and deployed nearly instantly, and begin delivering value immediately.
But their easy-to-deploy ubiquity comes with a price. Their flashy, fun-to-use beauty poses both physical and software security risks that won’t just cost you money but could impact your business significantly or even lose you customers.
So to successfully implement a tablet deployment, you need to develop a strategy that combines both physical and mobile security. Tablets were designed as a customer-facing product, a personal mobile device that travels with the same user. And out of the box, the security and interaction models are designed around that user scenario. A personal tablet is self-managed directly from the device, giving the consumer physical control over settings, apps, and content.
Clearly, tablet kiosks require a whole new world of management and security. It is a lone piece of technology out in the wild, subject to the whims of multiple strangers every day, and so it needs robust tools to ensure you have complete control over your investment and the user experience from any device, anywhere in the world.
Physical Security
Right out of the gate, the most immediately pressing security issue is the physical element of tablet kiosk security. Kiosk enclosures have become a cottage industry, with specialized companies springing up to offer a huge range of ways to both display your tablet and to lock it into place immovably. When choosing an enclosure, consider one that will block access to the home button on your device, in order to create an actual physical barrier to your settings and software. Your kiosk enclosure should also be impact-resistant to discourage enthusiastic thieves and include secure power cable enclosures to protect that vulnerable area.
Software Security
Most end users see a tablet kiosk and immediately want to explore it as it was meant to be explored; and then there’s the percentage who immediately want to pull up the home screen and start messing with your settings, pull up restricted or prohibited software or websites, or hack it in dozens of other ways we probably haven’t even begun to consider—their creativity is endless.
Locking down the Home button physically is a great first step, but you also need to immediately implement management and security apps. Make sure you select one that offers scalable, remote management, and is easy to deploy and use across a fleet of tablets. Your software solution should give you the tools you need to always stay on top of exactly what’s happening on your tablet, and when. And that information should be immediately transferrable into action: from locking down the tablet and locking out the unfriendly user, to wiping the tablet and its information.
Your tablet setup should ideally only offer access to a single app as well, as any switching between windows or modes opens up the opportunity for potential mayhem.
But perhaps most importantly, your tablet must provide guaranteed security when it comes to your customers’ data. When you offer the opportunity to engage with your brand and your content, you’re also asking your customer to trust that you will use any information they input only as disclosed in your privacy agreement and that you will ensure the safety of that data as well. Your software should both provide a way for your customers to clear the data they left behind, and a way to securely transmit any data they entrust to you.
Tablet kiosks are a tremendous marketing advantage in all industries, but in the rush to deploy them don’t neglect the essential security elements that will ensure the success of your deployment.
Moki MDM provides robust solutions that allow you to secure and manage your devices at any scale.
If you are interested in learning more about how Moki can help your business, please call us at (844) 665-4669 or request a demo at moki.com/demo.
