5 Tips and for Managing Employee BYOD
BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) to work craze is expanding at an incredible rate. It is affecting every business, from the smallest to the largest.
How each business is dealing with BYOD ranges from lack of interest to a full embrace of it with processes in place to maximize employee productivity while minimizing risk to the business.
We’ve written this article to give you the information you need to get control over how your employees are using their own personal devices to access, store, and communicate business-owned information in the course of doing their jobs.
You need to be aware of BYOD so that you can deal with the pressure from employees to support it.
If your company were to completely reject BYOD by allowing only company-issued and owned devices and completely banning the use of personal devices, you will eventually see your employee’s frustration.
There are steps you should take to put processes in place, and tools to enforce elements of those processes, that will allow your employees to use their personal devices to be productive while minimizing the security risks to your company.
Here are 5 tips to help manage employee BYOD:
1. Know who is accessing your network and your data
Regularly review what accounts are active for your email service, your VPN, intranet applications with their own user databases, etc. Are there any accounts active for anyone that shouldn’t have access (former employees, contractors, etc.)?
2. Know what data can be accessed remotely
Some of the information your company keeps is extremely valuable and must be guarded carefully.
It is helpful to prioritize the relative risk of the data that can be accessed through each portal to the outside world.
3. Know how employee devices are configured
The quickest and most effective line of defense is to minimally ensure that each device that is used to access your network is properly configured to reduce the risk of data loss from that device.
4. Communicate clearly with your employees
It is important that employees using BYOD are told clearly:
– What data is being monitored?
– What settings may be automatically modified?
– How will information about their devices be used by the company?
– What is the data retention period?
It is also important that employees are aware of what their responsibilities are:
– Keep the device’s security configured
– Immediately report any suspicious activity
– Immediately report if the device is lost or a data breach is suspected
5. Enjoy a happier workforce
Implementing the types of procedures mentioned here will require planning and effort. But it will all pay off.
Give us a call today to get your organizations BYOD program set up safely and efficiently.