Three Ways BYOD Can Hurt Your Business

BYOD is all the rage.  Everyone's doing it, right?  Here are some serious and very common challenges that businesses face when allowing employees to use their own devices for company business:

1. What if an employee-owned device gets lost or stolen?

According to an InformationWeek 2013 Mobile Security Survey, the #1 business mobility concern—far outstripping even the #2 concern—is lost or stolen devices. BYOD means that employees will use their personal devices for business, and that means that lost or stolen devices could lead to corporate data breaches.

 

Mobile Device Management (MDM) and other mobile endpoint security solutions that place an agent on employee devices can reduce this worry by providing a remote wipe option. If the employee device is reported lost or stolen, your IT administrator can simply scrub sensitive data and access to corporate services from the device.

2. What if an employee uploads corporate data to a cloud services like Dropbox?

The #2 concern in that survey had to do with employees' unauthorized use of third-party services for work purposes, a phenomenon known as "shadow IT." That's where they use another place to store "their" data as a temporary holding area.  It's a valid concern. About 60% of business units use shadow IT, according to a 2nd Watch survey. Cloud services are convenient, but they can open businesses up to disaster when employees upload things they shouldn't or the cloud services are breached.

 

A clear and concise appropriate use policy for devices holding corporate data must be in-place and signed by every employee that wants to use their own devices for your business purposes.

3. What if my employees' devices are compromised on unsecured networks?

BYOD enhances workforce mobility. That's a good thing, but it does create additional security challenges. Your corporate networks may be secure, but who's to say that the Wi-Fi at the airport or the neighborhood Starbucks is? Even employees' home wireless networks may not be secure. Accessing sensitive corporate data on unsecured networks can lead to disastrous breaches.

 

VPN secure tunnels are among the most popular and time-tested technologies to make sure that sensitive data stays safe in transit to and from non-corporate networks.  That also means, depending upon your type of business, that you may have to make sure BYOD devices are password protected and/or encrypted. You may get push back from your staff but if they're going to have access to your business data with their devices, you need to set some pretty strong ground rules.  After all, it's your business that's at risk if something goes wrong.

 

Jeff Hoffman is an IT consultant with ACT Network Solutions specializing in network security, management and data protection.  He can be reached at jhoffman@act4networks.com.