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To the folks managing large fleets of iPads

  • June 28, 2013
  • 3 replies
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What type of asset recovery/tracking software do you folks use?

Basically we are a medium sized school district considering going from just a few hundred iPads to doing an iPad 1:1 pilot program, and I'm trying to cover all the bases.

Sure there is Find my iPhone, but that was primarily designed for consumer use from what I know of it. I want to see what other folks in both the enterprise and the EDU sectors are using. If you are using Find my iPhone, feel free to tell me about how. Privacy policy and issues with tracking? Do you folks not track the devices and handle it through your legal department (i.e.. a signed contract to receive one)?

Feel free to discuss this asset management aspect in any way you feel is relevant. Thank you in advance.

Best answer by dgreening

There is no real true way of tracking an iOS device that is not easily removable by the user (I consider putting a device in recovery mode and wiping it easy). At least none that Apple has let us use. We would love to use Computrace on our iOS devices as we do on all of our other portable devices, but its just not possible currently. We hold departments and schools liable for replacing missing iOS devices out of their own budget, which has the effect of making them keep better inventory practices in place.

We would likely draw up a contract with the help of our legal department for any 1-to-1 program which would hold the parents of students financially liable for lost or stolen devices. We do this for our 1-to-1 staff laptop program, but it was a huge ordeal between our legal department and the teachers union to get it in place.

If you have been following the iOS7 WWDC videos, check out session 300/301 for info on being able to lock devices into MDM, which can also help deter theft. One would hope that Apple will release an enterprise grade equivalent of Find My iPhone in the near future.

    3 replies

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    • dgreening
    • Honored Contributor
    • Answer
    • June 28, 2013

    There is no real true way of tracking an iOS device that is not easily removable by the user (I consider putting a device in recovery mode and wiping it easy). At least none that Apple has let us use. We would love to use Computrace on our iOS devices as we do on all of our other portable devices, but its just not possible currently. We hold departments and schools liable for replacing missing iOS devices out of their own budget, which has the effect of making them keep better inventory practices in place.

    We would likely draw up a contract with the help of our legal department for any 1-to-1 program which would hold the parents of students financially liable for lost or stolen devices. We do this for our 1-to-1 staff laptop program, but it was a huge ordeal between our legal department and the teachers union to get it in place.

    If you have been following the iOS7 WWDC videos, check out session 300/301 for info on being able to lock devices into MDM, which can also help deter theft. One would hope that Apple will release an enterprise grade equivalent of Find My iPhone in the near future.

    mm2270
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    • mm2270
    • Legendary Contributor
    • June 28, 2013

    Yep, there is no technology available that will really help you with this. Organizational policy is going to be way to go in this case. Its the old "You break it, you own it" type of thing.

    On the horizon, iOS7 will have a new activation lock mechanism that can turn a lost or stolen iOS device into little more than a paperweight. Only issue it, as I understand it currently it ties into a user's iCloud account. We'll have to wait and see if the feature will extend to MDM products like Casper Suite. Remote wipe and remote lock have been available for a while now, but it would be awesome to see the new activation lock also become an option. No, it may not help with recovering them, but at least you could feel good knowing that whoever took it will have an unusable brick. Apple's hopes with this is it will seriously deter iDevice theft.

    Edit : That's funny. Dan edited his post to mention the same thing I was writing about. Thinking along the same lines...

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    • blackholemac
    • Author
    • Valued Contributor
    • July 1, 2013

    Thank both of you for the reply and anyone else who replies...from everything I'm seeing, we're going to have to go at this from the legal route...not anyone's favorite idea, but until iOS 7 (which I am very looking forward to), we're kinda in a pickle. With the iPads we already have (about 300-500 of them), we have been doing a horrible dance with AppleIDs that we have NO PLANS TO CONTINUE!!! I hand configured Find My iPad on those and users seemed to love it, but creating individual AppleIDs to get apps on devices is anything but scalable and totally a pain.

    My preferred wish is that Apple would expand their MDM APIs further to let Casper track these devices better personally.

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