How MDM Systems (Airwatch, MobileIron) figure out the device uniqueness on iOS7?

Question

Accessing device uniqueIdentifier is depracated in iOS7. There is Vendor ID as an identifier but it is erased with removal of the last app for that Team ID. Is there anything else used by MDM systems?

Answer 1

Actually, iOS MDM is purely server technology. Meaning that MDM client is integrated in iOS. What you may have seen are some MDM boostratp applications which are installed on iOS device. However, all they do are triggering device configuration (installation of MDM config profile).

However, as part of the MDM protocol, you can get UDID of device (using DeviceInformation command). However, you can get it on the server (not in your iOS app).

Answer 2

Many posts indicate that there is no Apple-approved standard way of doing this anymore. Unique identifier for an iPhone app is a good read about this. However, further down in the answers on that page, there is a notion how the same effect can be achieved using SSKeychain for persisting a self-generated UUID even over the boundaries of app reinstalls and multiple apps.

Answer 3

In AirWatch, devices are enrolled through a identification process on the device. That way, AirWatch gets all the characteristics of the device (Type, OS, Serial Number, UDID, ...)

Answer 4

Your best bet is to leverage your MDM's capabilities to back-feed any purely unique identifier (ie: Serial, UDID) on the device into your app layer. For instance AirWatch allows you to, upon installation/deployment of your app, bundle dynamic identifiers per the device installing the app via Managed App Config. It will send a key to the device containing its own UDID, Serial, etc.