Off late we’ve been talking a lot about BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) and for a good reason: it’s one of the most promising trends for small, medium, and large businesses throughout the world, perhaps next only to cloud computing. In a way, it’s almost as of both of these trends (Cloud Computing & BYOD (Increasing use of mobile devices for work) grow by feeding off on each other.
BYOD is certainly a happy way to work. Just as it is for most things, there are security risks, issues, and possibility of a breach too. Tom Kaneshige of CIO.com has an interesting story about a man who happened to gain access to an executive’s phone. He then called up a company and threatened to expose company data while demanding $50,000 as “ransom”. He eventually got caught but you do know where we are getting, don’t you?
The security risk was coming; it’s time we notice
Be it just a single computer, an entire network, cloud computing, or the use of mobile devices for corporate work – security risk is expected, it evidently exists, and the battle rages on. Plenty of companies are already getting on the BYOD bus and pretty soon, it’ll be hard to ignore the ubiquitous mobile device. On the other hand, security breach on these consumer devices is just much a reality though. A survey finding based on 600 IT departments’ responses the incidence rate of breaches on consumer devices is unbelievably more than 50%. We knew it was coming. Preparation is the key.
The bigger problem at hand
We run a business. We hire employees. We let them bring their own devices to work. The trouble isn’t about security – at least not as much as nonchalance to best practices. Employees who bring their own devices have a tendency to put off any sort of preventive action to protect data or their device or both, when using or accessing corporate data, until it’s too late. Further, since these are personal devices, employees feel empowered to download files from the Internet, play games, visit social media sites, and pretty much do anything they want to – all of which could be another possible window for security risk.
BYOD Security prevention isn’t like PC anti-virus
There isn’t anything new about mobile anti-virus software. The trouble is that most mobile users don’t consider using these until something actually goes wrong. A slew of new devices, across various OS, have spawned a new vertical for mobile security, if only users feel compelled enough to use them as a first wall of defense. While the market isn’t as busy as the anti-virus software market is, the scene is changing rapidly. Plenty of vendors have come up with products for these mobile devices and tablets.
So, should companies enforce basic security measures for personal devices? We’d love to hear from you.
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