A new trend has been slowly emerging with the increased prevalence of smartphones and tablets in the market. Not only do they have enormous benefits for the corporate environment, but it has become a staple for every household. As employees become accustomed to their own personal brand, they have adopted an expectancy to sync their devices with the corporate network in order to avoid juggling two separate devices. The practice of Bring Your Own Device (B.Y.O.D.) does bring additional benefits to the organization, but not without security risks.
Cisco Systems issued a survey that asked participants whether their employer allowed personal devices in the workplace, and 95% responded positively (Burt, 2012). Unfortunately, it also poses more challenges for IT. Administrators would have more devices to support, which means more devices that they have to research for vulnerabilities and find ways to mitigate the likelihood and severity of threats for any corporate information stored, processed, or transmitted on the personal device.
The good news is that there are a few solutions to ease the burden. One is to install a virtual machine on each device, where the user would have separate personal and corporate computing mechanisms. They could securely connect to the corporate network, where the administrators would have more direct control, such as forced encryption and password complexity. (Trumbo, 2012)
Mobilisafe also offers a commercial product known as Mobile Risk Management to aid administrators in their quest to align business strategy with IT objectives. According to Mobilisafe’s CEO Giri Sreenivas, the cloud-based solution “gives administrators real-time visibility of all such devices connecting to the network and assesses the risks involved with each one, from the level of security on the devices to whether the firmware has been upgraded to whether applications on them are malware or spyware.” (Burt, 2012) Where one technology digs a security hole, another is within reach to fill it.
References:
Burt, J. (2012, June 6). Mobilisafe Cloud Solution Assesses BYOD Risks to Businesses - Enterprise Networking - News & Reviews - eWeek.com. Technology News, Tech Product Reviews, Research and Enterprise Analysis - News & Reviews - eWeek.com. Retrieved July 27, 2012, from http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Enterprise-Networking/Mobilisafe-Cloud-Solution-Assess-BYOD-Risks-to-Businesses-194734/
Trumbo, J. (2012, March 16). What Can Be Done About Personal Devices In The Workplace?. Cloud File Security. Retrieved July 27, 2012, from cloudfilesecurity.biz/2012/03/16/what-can-be-done-about-personal-devices-in-the-workplace/
