Mobile device management for secured file sharing using FileCloud

January 1, 2014

Once FileCloud has been installed successfully, there is a range of administrative tasks that can be performed to make the user experience better. We have already discussed how to enable document preview in FileCloud and on the management of smart folders through FileCloud. It might so happen that an employee or a student leaves and […]

Once FileCloud has been installed successfully, there is a range of administrative tasks that can be performed to make the user experience better. We have already discussed how to enable document preview in FileCloud and on the management of smart folders through FileCloud.

It might so happen that an employee or a student leaves and you don’t want them to access their files anymore, which might contain sensitive data. In such a situation, you can use the admin interface to check the list of devices and selectively block certain ones from accessing the data anymore.

In this post, we will see how we can control remote devices like SmartPhones and Tablets using the FileCloud Admin. This kind of situation arises when an employee leaves an organization and you wish to revoke access to files in his remote devices, and wiping those concerned files remotely.

Login to your admin account and click on the Manage Devices link under Devices on the left panel. You will be able to view the devices that were used by people to access their FileCloud accounts.

If you want to remote wipe a certain device, click on the checkbox corresponding to the device and set permissions as Blocked from the dropdown. You will be asked for a confirmation about your action of blocking a certain device, as it would wipe the FileCloud data off the device and

Once you confirm, this action is performed the next time the user tries to login. Let us see how this happens in the remote device of the user. Here, we use a Samsung Galaxy S4 running the FileCloud app from Google Play. We had already added this account in a previous tutorial on the management of Smart Folders through File Cloud.

When we open our app and try to access the particular FileCloud account, a dialog box shows the message that the admin has issued a remote wipe for this device and that all the FileCloud related data would be removed.

After the FileCloud related files in the device have been wiped off, you are also told that you can not login into the account anymore as the Admin has blocked access to it.

Once this action has been performed, you can get the confirmation in FileCloud Admin saying “1 Action Enforced” next to the device list.

This is how you can manage remote devices with FileCloud admin. With the features available in the admin, it is very easy to revoke access to any user using any platform. We hope that this post helped you in understanding how FileCloud admin helps in remote device management. For further reading, you could also refer to the admin documentation. In case you have any queries, feel free to leave a comment below.

By Team FileCloud