Android 10 delivered many helpful features for enterprise admins and users. It also marked the official deprecation of Device Admin-based management, a legacy form of Android management. 

Since our original announcement about this change in 2017 we’ve been encouraging customers to adopt Android Enterprise, which offers a modern management framework for the evolving needs of enterprise customers.

While Android 10 marks the official deprecation of Device Admin, some customers may still be on the legacy management framework because either their devices are not yet upgraded to Android 10 or their Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) Device Policy Controller is not updated to API level 29. 

However, when Android 11 launches later this year, it is expected EMMs will need to update their DPCs to API level 29 by the fourth quarter of 2020. When this occurs, admins will no longer be able to manage lock screen settings, passwords or disable the camera.

We’ve created a new video that outlines many of the key changes that IT admins can expect and strategies to prepare for a transition to Android Enterprise.

To assist customers with this migration, we’ve created the Android Enterprise Migration Bluebook, which provides detailed steps and best practices for moving from a legacy Device Admin deployment to Android Enterprise. We also encourage reaching out to your organization’s EMM provider for assistance with planning.

Bringing Android Enterprise to your organization opens up new possibilities for your business, and a well-structured communication plan can help employees understand all the capabilities.

We’ve created the Android Enterprise Employee Adoption Kit to help IT teams communicate the features and benefits to their employees.

Resources include helpful videos, flyers, email templates, and slide decks that walk through how to get started with Android device features and management tools. We’ve designed these assets to be useful for preparing your users, assisting them in getting started, and sharing out tips, especially for those switching to Android.

Getting teams ready for Android Enterprise

To generate buzz before introducing Android Enterprise to your organization, you can use and customize our email scripts to share details about the new mobile experience for your team. Some companies may wish to create a demo desk to give new users a guided tour of Android Enterprise features. We’ve included suggested scripts to help walk employees through what’s to come.

Our user adoption slides detail the benefits, features, and scope of different device management modes. New YouTube videos offer a helpful overview of using the work profile, managed Google Play, and zero-touch enrollment. These videos can be embedded into internal sites or shared out directly.

Also, customizable slide decks walk through initial steps with a new Android device, provide detailed instructions for key tasks like downloading an app, or highlight the many benefits to using the work profile.

Learning Android features

Giving your team regular tips and tricks helps them take advantage of Android features and gain confidence in their device. We’ve prepared assets that offer suggestions for using helpful productivity tools in Android and embracing the privacy and work-life balance the work profile offers.

To support Android Enterprise customers with their mobility initiatives, we’ve created a series of webinars at Android OnAir that offer best practices in deploying and managing devices. Each webinar tackles an essential subject that is top of mind for IT decision makers and admins. Participants can join a live Q&A during the broadcast to get answers directly from Google. If you can’t make the live broadcast, webinars are all available on-demand.

Our current catalogue of on-demand webinars cover important topics like deployment strategies and Android security updates. Check out the upcoming schedule and register today to reserve your spot.

Google security services on Android 

April 15:Android devices are backed by industry-leading security to help keep devices safe. Learn how Google Play Protect, Safe Browsing, SafetyNet and other Google Security Services help safeguard company data and employee privacy, and discover strategies to incorporate them into your mobility initiative.

Using mobile to improve business continuity 

May 13: Android can transform how your teams connect with each other and work more efficiently, no matter where they are. Learn how you can take mobile devices beyond traditional use cases and give employees more convenience with access to internal services like private apps, corporate sites and key services to extend business continuity to any device.

How Google mandates Android security standards

June 17:Consistent security and management standards give companies the confidence to use a mix of devices from different OEMs to support various business use cases. Find out more about how Google works closely with device manufacturers and developers to implement security systems that are deployed on enterprise devices.

Preventing enterprise data loss on Android

July 15: Data loss can be catastrophic for any business. Learn how Android Enterprise management features give IT admins the tools to mandate secure app and data usage practices that help prevent leaks and guard against attacks from bad actors. Discover Android management strategies to give employees the level of access you want while helping protect critical company data.

Equip your frontline workers for success with Android

August 12: Frontline workers like sales associates, warehouse managers, delivery drivers and others perform critical tasks that drive customer success. However, mobile investment in these employees remains low. Businesses can use mobile devices to empower these teams with data-driven decisions and real-time access to company resources. Learn how business can use Android device diversity to provide the right device for each digital use case.

Explaining Android Enterprise
Recommended and security requirements

September 16: Android Enterprise Recommended simplifies mobility choices for businesses with a Google-approved shortlist of devices, services, and partners that meet our strict enterprise requirements. Find out how this initiative can help your team select devices with consistent security and software requirements and find validated Enterprise Mobility Management and Managed Service Provider partners.

Holding your focus and attention at work can sometimes be a challenge, but Android offers helpful tools so that you can reduce distractions and get work done on your own terms. Whether it’s news alerts, social media, or other apps you find distracting, Focus mode lets you pause apps that could keep you from tackling those important tasks. The work profile also clearly labels work apps in a separate tab, so you can quickly access the important ones you need to get your job done.

Get in the zone with Focus mode

Use Focus mode to pause apps in your personal profile that you find distracting.

Once you turn on Focus mode, the apps you chose will be grayed out on your screen and their notifications will be hidden. Also, any notifications from those apps are put on hold until Focus mode is turned off.

To suit your work hours, you can create a daily schedule with Focus mode so it launches automatically during the time period you specify. If you’re on a lunch break or need to check any of the paused apps, you can take a break from Focus mode to use those apps for a short period.  When the break’s over, Focus mode resumes automatically so those apps won’t bother you.

Work profile organizes the apps you need

On personally enabled devices, the work profile helps you quickly get to the apps you need. When it’s time to step away from work, you can pause the work profile—work apps will be unavailable and won’t send you any notifications until they’re back on.

Focus mode and work profile are among the many ways that Android works the way you want. Learn more about what Android can do for you at work.

Technology should be there to assist you at work by solving problems in new ways. Android is built to be helpful with smart features that speed up everyday tasks and make work more accessible. From better communication tools to time-saving tricks, here are some of the ways that Android can help you be more productive. 

Faster dialing with Click to Call

Need to make a call while working from your laptop? Instead of awkwardly glancing back and forth between your computer and phone to punch in the number, which can easily lead to a misdial, Click to Call does all the work at once.

With Click to Call, you can send a phone number from the Chrome browser on your computer to your Android phone. Just right-click on the number, select your Android device from the menu, and this will send a push notification to your phone. Then tap the notification and the  dial button to start the call. Make sure you’re signed in to sync on both devices.

Save time with Smart Reply

In Android 10, Smart Reply gives recommended actions based on the content of a message you receive. For example, if a colleague sends you the address of a client meeting, Android will pull up directions in Google Maps. Or if you receive a Hangouts Chat message with a link to a Google Doc, you can open it directly and start editing. Smart Reply works in messaging apps like Hangouts Chat, Messages, and many third-party apps such as Signal.

Enhance communication with speech to text apps

Live Transcribe and Live Caption help you capture and follow conversations, presentations, or meetings. As part of Android’s accessibility suite of tools, Live Transcribe captions speech in real time on screen and, if you choose to, saves the transcriptions on your device for up to three days. The app can help the deaf people and people with hearing loss more easily participate in conversations. Additionally, for business meetings it can provide clarity in communicating when one or more of the participants are not native speakers to the language used in the conversation.

Live Transcribe is available in the Play Store for all devices Android 5.0 and up. On Pixel 3 and Pixel 4 devices, the service can be enabled from the accessibility settings.

Live Caption, introduced in Android 10, automatically captions any media playing in real time on your device, even if you’re offline. It’s helpful for situations where you need to catch a company presentation or webinar, but it’s not convenient to play the audio because you don’t have headphones on you. Live Caption gives deaf people and people with hearing loss another accessibility tool for following along with a video conference or company presentation.

Live Caption is available on Pixel 3, Pixel 3a, and Pixel 4 devices running Android 10, and is coming to the Galaxy S20.

These are among the many ways Android is here to help and strives to provide new solutions for everything you need to get done throughout the day. Learn more about how Android is ready for work and transforming how businesses get things done.

Just because people use their phones at work, doesn’t mean they should have to sacrifice their privacy. Since Android 5.0, the work profile has helped ensure personal data remains private from IT even when employees bring their device to work, while giving IT the tools they need to secure corporate data. 

But when given a phone by their company, employees don’t always know what IT can and can’t see. That’s a challenge for employees who want to keep their personal data private; in a recent survey of workers by ESG Research last year, 71% said they expect any personal information to remain private on work devices.

What’s coming in Android 11

In Android 11, enhancements to the work profile mean IT can confidently extend the same privacy protections to a company-owned device that people have come to expect from the work profile on a personally-owned device. 

For IT professionals, new asset management and device-level controls for the work profile can manage and restrict personal use to ensure company assets are compliant with corporate policies. Now in Android 11, IT will have additional control over what the employee can do on the personal side of the device, while not having visibility into how they choose to use the device within those admin-defined restrictions. 

For example, IT can ensure employees can’t install video streaming apps that would consume large amounts of company-subsidized cellular data. On the other hand, IT will not have visibility into which of the permitted applications employees choose to install and use. 

For employees, this means they can get the full privacy protections from the work profile on company-owned devices, restricting IT visibility into their personal apps and data.

All of this is accomplished without compromise to the integrity of company data. The strong boundary between work and personal data established by the work profile’s architecture, combined with Android’s extensive set of management and security features, ensures that IT has full control and visibility over where their work data can go. 

Upgrading user privacy

To enable this functionality as quickly and easily as possible, Android will automatically migrate work profile on fully managed devices to the improved work profile experience when devices upgrade to Android 11. Work profiles on fully managed devices will not be supported for either existing devices that upgrade to, or new activations on, Android 11. Other devices currently configured with work profiles are unaffected by these changes.

If you currently deploy Android Enterprise and have questions about how your Android 10 devices may be affected, please contact your EMM partner for more information.

Want to learn more?

Learn more about this and other new Android 11 features on the Developer Preview 1 site, and download a system image for Pixel 2, 3, 3a, and 4 now.

Just because people use their phones at work, doesn’t mean they should have to sacrifice their privacy. Since Android 5.0, the work profile has helped ensure personal data remains private from IT even when employees bring their device to work, while giving IT the tools they need to secure corporate data. 

But when given a phone by their company, employees don’t always know what IT can and can’t see. That’s a challenge for employees who want to keep their personal data private; in a recent survey of workers by ESG Research last year, 71% said they expect any personal information to remain private on work devices.

What’s coming in Android 11

In Android 11, enhancements to the work profile mean IT can confidently extend the same privacy protections to a company-owned device that people have come to expect from the work profile on a personally-owned device. 

For IT professionals, new asset management and device-level controls for the work profile can manage and restrict personal use to ensure company assets are compliant with corporate policies. Now in Android 11, IT will have additional control over what the employee can do on the personal side of the device, while not having visibility into how they choose to use the device within those admin-defined restrictions. 

For example, IT can ensure employees can’t install video streaming apps that would consume large amounts of company-subsidized cellular data. On the other hand, IT will not have visibility into which of the permitted applications employees choose to install and use. 

For employees, this means they can get the full privacy protections from the work profile on company-owned devices, restricting IT visibility into their personal apps and data.

All of this is accomplished without compromise to the integrity of company data. The strong boundary between work and personal data established by the work profile’s architecture, combined with Android’s extensive set of management and security features, ensures that IT has full control and visibility over where their work data can go. 

Upgrading user privacy

To enable this functionality as quickly and easily as possible, Android will automatically migrate work profile on fully managed devices to the improved work profile experience when devices upgrade to Android 11. Work profiles on fully managed devices will not be supported for either existing devices that upgrade to, or new activations on, Android 11. Other devices currently configured with work profiles are unaffected by these changes.

If you currently deploy Android Enterprise and have questions about how your Android 10 devices may be affected, please contact your EMM partner for more information.

Want to learn more?

Learn more about this and other new Android 11 features on the Developer Preview 1 site, and download a system image for Pixel 2, 3, 3a, and 4 now.

Enterprises regularly contend with evolving security threats. Their mobile devices and operating systems must create trust so IT teams, managers, and employees have confidence that their information is backed by strong security measures.

To assist our enterprise partners and customers with accurate and timely information about the Android approach to security, we’ve published a new update to the Android Enterprise Security Whitepaper. This document serves as a comprehensive overview of how Android enables best-in-class security by using multi-layered protections, Google-powered artificial intelligence and the collective contributions of the wider community.

The newest edition of this whitepaper includes the latest Android 10 security enhancements, which make Android even more secure and helpful for businesses. Learn about how Android has made it simpler to distribute updates and security patches through Google Play System updates, new VPN capabilities, and how Google Play Protect works to help protect enterprise devices. Android 10 also has a number of improvements that provide better security and privacy for employees, whether they are bringing their own devices to work or using ones issued by their employer. 

Additionally, the paper outlines key updates to the personal and corporate data separation of the Android work profile; details on device and profile management; and how the Android team continues to enhance and extend our defenses with initiatives like the Android Security Rewards program and the App Defense Alliance.

We recently shared how Android 10 delivers an abundance of helpful features for enterprises. Today, we’re shining a spotlight on some of the new security and privacy features in Android 10, which give IT admins new tools and protections to help keep their device fleets prepared against the latest threats.

Updatability enhancements

Getting reliable security updates is critical for enterprises, who want the latest protections for their devices. Android 10 introduced Google Play system updates, building on the work of Project Mainline, which focused on a simpler and faster method to deliver updates to the Android ecosystem. Many essential components like media codecs, time zone data, DNS resolver, and Conscrypt are now modularized, enabling them to be updated through Google Play. 

Google Play system updates can be delivered more directly and uniformly across the ecosystem, as vulnerabilities can be patched from Google Play without a full operating system update.

Our security efforts are regularly evolving to better meet ecosystem needs. For example, the 2015 Stagefright vulnerability accelerated patching security vulnerabilities across different device makers with our monthly security updates program. This has led to substantial progress in ecosystem security. Google Play system updates create a stronger framework for quickly and comprehensively addressing future vulnerabilities. We can accelerate the delivery of a patch and make the update available through Google Play, giving greater consistency to the whole ecosystem.

Strengthening data protections

Protecting data in transit and on the device are essential elements to mobile security in an enterprise setting. In Android 10, we added support for TLS 1.3 and made it the default, but TLS 1.2 is still supported.  TLS 1.3 protects more of the handshake process and can be up to 40 percent faster than previous versions.  With better encryption, it enhances the protection of device identities and removes some obsolete and less secure features.

TLS 1.3 removes support for weaker cryptographic algorithms and uses a newly-designed handshake that fixes a number of weaknesses in TLS 1.2. Additionally, it no longer supports certificates that use SHA-1 hash algorithms.

Storage encryption is also critical to enterprise security. All Android 10 devices are required to encrypt user data. While most devices achieve this through the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), Android 10 uses a new encryption mode called Adiantum, which expands encryption to a wider range of hardware, such as devices with lower-end ARM processors that do not support AES extensions.

Safeguarding app installs with Google Play

Google Play uses a number of tools to deter the installation of malicious apps on devices. Application signing validates that an app has been properly signed by the developer, which indicates it has been submitted unmodified for installation on Android devices. 

Android 10 supports the latest APK signature scheme, which better secures apps against malicious activity. Together with Google Play Protect, Android 10 continues our efforts in applying best-in-class data and device protection.

We recently showcased how banks around the world are using Android to work more productively, while maintaining the rigorous security standards required in the financial services industry. One use case where Android helped enable remote working was for personal “Bring Your Own” devices (BYOD). 

At Jefferies, an investment bank based in New York City, 85 percent of their work devices are employee-owned. It’s essential that bankers are able to access corporate apps and data on the go, and the Android work profile has been key to enabling the Android BYODs across the organization.

Jefferies has evolved its mobile strategy to focus on empowering employees to be able to access and use essential internal resources and web apps, and connect in real-time with rich collaboration services. This requirement was critical as senior bankers frequently travel yet still require access to in-house finance systems while away from the office. Transitioning to Android Enterprise enabled the BYOD fleet with single sign-on (SSO) to secure access to corporate resources and achieve a high level of employee efficiency.

Android Enterprise’s work profile allowed Jefferies to enable and connect their global workforce through a BYOD program. “The Android work profile means we can provide secure access to corporate data and apps for the large number of our employees who use their personal devices at work,” says Mittul Mehta, vice president, platform security engineering at Jefferies.

Being able to offer a BYOD strategy has given employees flexibility and choice, and for Jefferies has helped increase user adoption and reduced the training demands on the IT department. IT has seen further efficiencies from a quicker onboarding process (requiring only minutes to set up the device), to fewer tickets submitted by users.

Jefferies uses the managed Google Play store to distribute both web and native apps to its employees. When it comes to accessing legacy apps, Android Enterprise works alongside a solution from Hypergate that provides on-premise SSO authentication to Jefferies’ Windows authentication infrastructure. This allows Jefferies to support a hybrid cloud environment and ensure that the user experience is seamless; employees can use the native Google Chrome app on Android to securely access internal websites wherever they are in the world.

Jefferies’ success with Android has been demonstrable. “[Users are now able to] complete their work on their phone in a fast, effective and secure way,” Mehta says, “while getting reassurance that the work profile data separation means that their personal data stays private.” You can learn more about how Android benefits your organization’s employees at the Android for employees website.