Allowing employees to use their personal smartphones, tablets, laptops, or other devices for work is known as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy. It has attracted increasing attention in recent years, particularly during the COVID-19, as a tool for staff to work remotely from home or on the go, accessing their company's network and data. BYOD has numerous advantages, but it increases cybersecurity risks.
Allowing workers to have their own devices for work, with appropriate use and safety considerations, might be an ideal workplace policy for some firms. BYOD, on the other hand, can pose a severe threat to the security of business data and systems if it is not fully understood and properly regulated.
BYOD means that the user owns, maintains, and supports the device. This consists of many factors' controller will have far less control over the device than it would over a standard corporate-owned and-provided device. Given that the data controller may have a high number and a diverse variety of devices to handle, data security is a top priority.
Why BYOD?
A successful, well-managed BYOD system can:
- Provide increased freedom for some enterprises,
- Increasing labor mobility would improve efficiency and productivity while also increasing employee happiness,
- Allow for a wider variety of device types,
- Reduce the amount of money spent on hardware and the amount of money spent on software licenses,
- Reduce device management for company-owned devices.
Security and Privacy Concerns
BYOD poses many data security risks and can lead to information security vulnerabilities. For example, confidential information could leak from unprotected and unmanaged devices, either intentionally or unintentionally.
Data loss or exposure is more likely when personal devices lack encryption capabilities or are lost or stolen. Personal devices may be infected with harmful software or viruses, or they may be more vulnerable to internet attacks,
The device owner is responsible for managing passwords, anti-virus and anti-malware protection, security patches, and other safety measures, which means you have little to no control over the device's security,
From a legal standpoint, the data controller (i.e., the company) is responsible for securing personal information, not the machine owner.
Best Practices for BYOD while Working Remotely
If your employees work from home and utilize company software through their personal devices, you should:
- When it comes to remote access, use multi-factor authentication.
- Guarantee that the device owner's data is kept distinct from the organization's data and that employees cannot unintentionally or deliberately move the organization's data into their personal storage on the device or onto other personally-owned devices.
- Be conscious that the device's security may be risked and take precautions, such as updating out-of-date and unpatched operating systems or applications.
Consider the increased risk of your systems and data being hacked if your employees access your business apps and data using their own devices and software. There can be many reasons:
- Out-of-date software or operating systems, weak passwords, or insecure methods of communication, such as personal email accounts, may be subject to exploitation.
- Because devices are often shared among family members, unauthorized individuals may have access to personal data.
- Data stored on personal devices is unlikely to be encrypted, leaving it susceptible in the case of device loss or theft.
- Data can readily be transferred to unsecured storage devices, such as USB sticks and external hard drives owned by individuals, increasing the risk of data loss.
To avoid potential data breaches, keep these security risks in mind and put procedures in place to reduce them.
Creating Your Own BYOD Policy
In order to implement a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) plan in your company, you'll need three things:
- A software application for monitoring network-connected devices,
- A written policy describing both the employer's,
- And the user's duties, a user agreement admitting that they have read and comprehended the policy.
You should undertake a complete risk assessment and thoroughly analyze your responsibility for data access, processing, and storage before drafting your policy.
A BYOD policy should uphold your firm's information and digital infrastructure's security and integrity. It should include information such as:
- Acceptable usage - which actions are permitted or prohibited on company or personal,
- Equipment - which devices are allowed to download apps and which devices are not allowed to download apps - which apps are allowed to download and which apps are not allowed to download,
- Ownership and administration of apps and data, as well as support and service - how to handle connectivity issues, app configuration, and so on
- Security - what safeguards will be in place to prevent unauthorized access to the company's data and systems, as well as enable remote device management?
- Liability - e.g., for device costs or data loss, or device termination of access - e.g., for non-compliance with policy or an employee departure.
In addition to a policy, you should offer your personnel explicit instructions on:
- How to maintain their device secure by updating the software,
- How to create secure passwords,
- Ways to keep personal data on their devices to a minimum.
Conclusion
There are heightened risks of loss of control regardless of the device, corporation, or employee-owned. It's difficult to tell if a device is being used on a secure wireless network, misplaced, and so on once an employee leaves the workplace. As a result, if the company wishes to safeguard devices that have access to corporate data, the IT department should focus on layered encryption, smarter licensing, and maximum-security protocols.
For example, including Mobile Device Management allows the organization to remotely access the security and content of an employee's device. The company can build a full level of control for such devices if they are utilized in conjunction with file integrity monitoring.
Fortunately, firms can take the right efforts to mitigate this problem, such as training personnel on how to ring-fence data. Employees can be encouraged to save company data in apps that have good data recovery and backup capabilities.