SkieWhat does hardening mean in Skie device management?
Hardening is the set of Android restrictions Skie applies so that students cannot step around the rules on a managed tablet or phone. Each protection is its own policy switch, such as blocking factory reset, safe mode or VPN setup. Most are on by default, a few are optional, and the Skie dashboard shows the state of each one per device.
In plain terms, hardening is everything that stops a device from being quietly loosened after you set it up. Skie runs as the Android device owner, so it can switch on Android's own user restrictions and device policies. A student does not meet a Skie pop-up saying no. The setting is simply unavailable or greyed out in Android.
Skie builds hardening as a list of separate switches rather than one big toggle. There is a switch for factory reset from Settings, one for safe mode, one for developer options and adb, one for adding users, one for VPN setup, and so on. Each switch has its own page in this knowledge base. Most are on by default for every new organisation. A smaller group, such as camera, Bluetooth, SMS and screenshots, is optional because schools differ on whether they want them.
Hardening sits next to the other parts of Skie: app lists, schedules, web filtering and install guard. Those decide what a device may do. Hardening decides whether the device can be changed so that those decisions stop applying. Skie is built to be tamper-proof, and if anything ever did get through, the admin is alerted immediately, down to the exact device.
Practical tip: before your first batch of devices, open the hardening section of the policy and read through the optional switches once. Decide which ones fit your school, then set them at organisation level and adjust for specific groups later.