Safety Issues with BYOD

[Acorn Newsbot]

BYOD (bring your own device) into the workplace has been heralded as an emerging trend in the past couple of years.

But before you consider a BYOD model in your business, what are the potential security and safety issues surrounding such a policy? Can you ever truly execute a flawless system when employees get to choose exactly what equipment they work on?

Whilst there are plus sides to getting into the BYOD swing of things consider the following implications to ensure you proceed with all the facts.

Data Protection
Protecting sensitive data is a legal requirement and the Government has started to impose severe fines on companies that fail to comply.

If employees use their handsets and computers to access networks and private information then what happens if that device gets lost or finds itself the wrong hands? How can you ensure that the equipment is only used by the employee and not left at home for someone undesirable to access?

Passwords and logins are obvious solutions but not always fool proof.

Virus Infection
A companywide computer virus spells disaster. Wasted man hours repairing a vicious cyber-attack whilst staff sit helpless twiddling their thumbs is hardly an exercise in productivity.

So how will you police where your employees go on the internet at home? A device used for auditing purposes by day and entertainment purposes by night is far more likely to throw up dangerous sites from streaming media and gambling websites.

Other than imposing a firewall across all employee equipment (which will not make you popular if it’s their device) this is a tough one to navigate.

Business device integration
What works on one handset won’t always work on another. Imagine a business that becomes reliant on specific iPhone apps and technology to do their work. A creative agency working primarily on Macs isn’t going to thank you if you allow staff to bring in their Windows based PCs and BlackBerrys which would be impossible to integrate.

Different businesses work better on different devices for a reason. Synthesis across an organisation is important to ensure efficiency and standard practice.

Software and systems integration
In large organisations employees have traditionally been issued the same handsets and PCs for one very good reason – system integration. Due to the fact that technology varies so much on differing software systems, how are you able to ensure that staff have one standard way of working, or logging into IT systems?

Often companies work from one central CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system. These often require a single way of working with compatible devices to run effectively.

Also, something as simple as an email signature change or formatting font sizes could spell frustration for your IT department – the one area of the office that may greet the news of a BYOD adoption with contempt.

So ‘to BYOD or not BYOD - that is the question?’ Done properly in the right business it could work wonderfully, but tread carefully for your own security.
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