BYOD: Securing Company Data
IT (Information Technology) is synonymous with acronyms: IT, TCP/IP, VoIP, CAT5. An acronym that has gained recent traction in IT departments and boardrooms of a number of organizations is BYOD. Bring your own device (BYOD), also referred to as bring your own technology (BYOT), bring your own PC (BYOPC), and bring your own phone (BYOP), refers to the recent trend of employees, business partners and others, bringing their personally selected and purchased technology device(s) (mobile phone, tablet, laptop, etc) to their workplace with the goal and/or the desire to use them to access the organization’s applications/solutions and data in order to do their usual work tasks. Many CIOs and IT Managers are concerned with the rising swell of requests and the adoption of BYOD. It’s difficult for an IT department to control and secure the company data on devices to which they do not have in their own direct control. There are a number of vulnerabilities (viruses, security breaches, and data loss) as a result of connecting personal devices to the enterprise infrastructure; which is the exact practice of BYOD. So, why would an organization introduce and embrace a policy that at first blush looks to introduce so much security uncertainty? Two key reasons; the employees want it, and it saves money (which means “the bosses want it”). Whether it’s for purely esthetic purposes, or for justifiable reasons, more employees are electing to use their own preferred hardware device and operating system. Organizations don’t revise their hardware specs as quickly as the technology manufacturers do. The result is that employees typically own newer and more powerful devices than the organization does. Employees want the latest and greatest technology. Many also make strong arguments that the familiarity of the device makes them a more productive worker. Some organization hiring managers believe that offering a BYOD environment is helping to...