BYOD, or Bring Your Own Device, refers to employees using personal devices, such as mobile phones, laptops, or desktop computers, for work-related purposes. As more people continue to work remotely, BYOD has become a convenient alternative to juggling multiple devices, despite increased cyber threats.
Like any other trend, BYOD has advantages and disadvantages. On the bright side, BYOD raises employee productivity and efficiency. On the downside, BYOD security can be challenging to achieve, especially as 17% of employees don’t even notify IT departments that they are using personal devices for work purposes.
Because businesses rely on hybrid work environments, more employees use personal devices to make their work more efficient, reply to job emails, chat with colleagues, hold online meetings, and handle sensitive corporate information. While increased employee productivity is clearly a worthy incentive, enterprises should also consider the cybersecurity issues of BYOD adoption, especially when it takes place outside a security policy frame.
Employees accessing corporate networks, systems, and apps from their personal and unsecured devices boost the risk of malware and insider threats. For businesses and institutions worldwide, BYOD security is a key challenge, especially in today’s cybersecurity context. BYOD security is the umbrella term for all organizational procedures designed to mitigate and avoid BYOD security threats while ensuring that any company-related data handled on BYOD devices are safe from theft and unauthorized access.
BYOD security best practices help prevent data breaches and include various measures, such as having defined network security policies and adequate endpoint security, having continuous endpoint authentication on all BYOD and corporate devices, and deploying a Mobile Application Management (MAM) or Mobile Device Management (or both).
Read more about BYOD Security: Reducing Enterprise Risk With Continuous Endpoint Authentication.
