— Did they make backups before testing?
Posted: Sun Feb 09, 2025 5:01 am
Security Tales: The Destructive PIN
Vladimir Bezmaly | 03.08.2017
- Good afternoon, Johann!
- Good morning, Marie! Did something happen?
— Yes! We got a call from company M. They decided to bring the rules for PIN codes of their employees' smartphones in line with our recommendations. In their mobile device management system.
- And what?
— They complain that half of the employees' smartphones, which were running the operating system A from G, refused to work any longer. They had to be reset to factory settings. Naturally, the employees were, to put it mildly, unhappy.
- Of course not.
- So who is to blame? Is this requirement in our recommendations?
- Of course there is.
— They didn’t fulfill it?
- No!
— Sorry, but in this case there are no complaints mexico mobile database us. And the fact that many manufacturers of smartphones running OS A set the length of the PIN code to exactly four characters and no more has been known for a long time. We have already written that we do not recommend using such smartphones.
Android smartphones from some manufacturers, if you set a PIN code length longer than four digits, automatically turn into a "brick" after rebooting. Only a factory reset helps. Moreover, it is impossible to guess in advance which models this will happen to.
Do you test MDM before applying rules? Do you back up smartphones before rolling out policies? Or at least recommend users to back up their smartphones before changing policies?
Vladimir Bezmaly | 03.08.2017
- Good afternoon, Johann!
- Good morning, Marie! Did something happen?
— Yes! We got a call from company M. They decided to bring the rules for PIN codes of their employees' smartphones in line with our recommendations. In their mobile device management system.
- And what?
— They complain that half of the employees' smartphones, which were running the operating system A from G, refused to work any longer. They had to be reset to factory settings. Naturally, the employees were, to put it mildly, unhappy.
- Of course not.
- So who is to blame? Is this requirement in our recommendations?
- Of course there is.
— They didn’t fulfill it?
- No!
— Sorry, but in this case there are no complaints mexico mobile database us. And the fact that many manufacturers of smartphones running OS A set the length of the PIN code to exactly four characters and no more has been known for a long time. We have already written that we do not recommend using such smartphones.
Android smartphones from some manufacturers, if you set a PIN code length longer than four digits, automatically turn into a "brick" after rebooting. Only a factory reset helps. Moreover, it is impossible to guess in advance which models this will happen to.
Do you test MDM before applying rules? Do you back up smartphones before rolling out policies? Or at least recommend users to back up their smartphones before changing policies?