Most employees have a smartphone, and they will bring them to work. While many IT departments won’t approve of this, they have to start welcoming bring your own devices (BYOD) as part of the organization’s ecosystem. In today’s interconnected era, no one wants to leave their personal devices at home and risk missing out on an important email, social media post, or trending subject.
That being said, there are certain best practices that organizations can use to improve their employees’ productivity through their own devices. This can prove to be beneficial to employees as they will now have access to mobile applications, remote work access, email, and browser. There are several challenges associated with BYOD, but these can be tackled head-on using the following guidelines.
1) Building the Ideal BYOD Policy
Your organization needs to have its own BYOD policy that places importance on security, management, and data usage to fulfill the demands and expectations of end users. The BYOD policy should be in-line with industry requirements, company processes, local legislation, and management tools.
2) BYOD Applications Should be Flexible
Any software package that you want users to install on their mobile devices should be versatile, easy to use, and highly productive. It is true that corporations want to exercise more control over their data, but this control should not come at the cost of accessibility. This will ultimately defeat the purpose of having a Bring Your Own Device policy in the first place.
3) Provide Training to Employees
It is just as important to train your employees, because human error is the biggest leverage cybercriminals can use to their advantage. A smart thing to do is to separate business-related data from personal data. You would want your employees to only make use of trustworthy and credible applications from popular stores, instead of lesser known apps that promise to perform the same tasks.
As an example, your employee could be using a mailbox app to collect emails from different email providers, but the business email should only be accessible on the company’s designated app, such as GSuite or Microsoft Outlook.
4) Deleting Data Remotely
Your employee might decide to quit suddenly or lose/misplace his or her device. Companies that fail to anticipate such incidents are at risk of spilling out sensitive data into the wrong hands. For such situations, it is necessary to gain remote access to the data and delete it promptly. This is why you should always sign an agreement with employees so they can understand you have the right to delete data remotely.
5) Employee Private Data
Although an employee’s smartphone device is personal in nature, by enrolling them on your BYOD program, you are inevitably becoming privy to private information. In many cases, you might be able to use various functionalities such as photo capture, location tracking, voice recording, and others.
Your employees should understand the implications of signing up for the BYOD program.
Implementing the best cyber security features can be a little nerve-racking for many executives. This is why you need the help of cybersecurity consultants who specialize in this niche. Get in touch with our engineers for the most effective BYOD solutions for your company.
