BRING YOUR OWN DEVICE TREND
Key aspects of endpoint data backup and recovery
BYOD’s biggest concern is ensuring the security of company data stored on private devices. The border between privacy and employee control is very problematic.
Why?
Because the data stored on personal devices is much more susceptible to cyber attacks, malware or data leaks.
What does BYOD stand for?
Deploy the BYOD trend in your company in a smart and safe way
Bring Your Own Device or BYOD – is a term that specifies the use of private devices for business purposes. It means that a company allows employees access their networks and work-related systems with one’s personal device. By personal devices we understand smartphones, PCs, tablets, or USB drives. While BYOD has a bunch of pros, like increased employee productivity, effectiveness and satisfaction, it’s considered by many companies a part of shadow IT or just simply banned.
Many IT departments are trying to keep up with frequent technological changes on the market, but employees increasingly want to use their own devices to access company data. Private devices are usually more modern and offer more functionality to their users. However, BYOD also has a darker side. If not fully understood and regulated, it can threaten IT security and expose the company’s sensitive systems.
End-devices data protection still remains a big concern.
BYOD’s biggest concern is ensuring the security of company data stored on private devices. The border between privacy and employee control is quite problematic. Mutual understanding of the expectations of both parties is of key importance. Why? Because the data stored on personal devices is much more susceptible to cyber attacks, malware or data leaks.
A personal device is used for various activities not directly related to work or professional life. Checking private mailboxes, logging in to social networking sites, installing applications that is not always accepted by the system administrator of the company.
Important elements of BYOD rules include:
- Types of approved devices
- Principles of data security and ownership
- Levels of IT support granted to personal devices (if they are allowed in the company at all)
BYOD’s reliable security policy should be integrated with the general principles of IT security. The level of support that will be used for personal devices must ensure a balance between organization security and employee privacy.
The challenges of BYOD
A company that takes the creation of security policies for BYOD must not only take into account employee privacy, but also the fact that users’ devices might run on a different version of the operating system. That is why it is difficult to implement standard solutions here. Unification is almost impossible.
BYOD Pros and Cons
Cost effective
Cost reduction is an important factor for most companies. Especially, when we talk about organizations with hundreds or thousands of employees. First, after implementing the BYOD rules, it is the customer’s responsibility to have the right device for work. Thus, costs are passed on to employees. In addition, the company can count on greater efficiency and availability of employees. The implementation of modern tools that are responsible for the security of company data is usually much more beneficial than equipping employees with appropriate devices. All these factors easily lead to savings.
“Companies favouring BYOD make an annual saving of $350 per year, per employee” (Cisco)
Increased efficiency and creativity
There is a positive correlation between the level of employee comfort and productivity. Thanks to their own devices, employees feel more confident, master their tasks faster and are able to optimize them with the help of technology.
Personal devices are usually equipped with the latest technologies, which creates a climate for creating unconventional solutions to problems. In addition, the IT department can be confident that the equipment will be updated regularly.
“Using portable devices for work tasks saves employees 58 minutes per day while increasing productivity by 34%” (Frost & Sullivan)
Employee Satisfaction
When you allow employees to bring their own set of devices, their level of satisfaction increases significantly. How important is employee satisfaction? It is said, that most employees (around 60%) prefer to use their own cellphone at work rather than having a cup of coffee.
“61% of Gen Y and 50% of 30+ workers believe the tech tools they use in their personal lives are more effective and productive than those used in their work life” (Dell)
Shadow IT
Shadow IT means that employees use unapproved programs and applications on devices connected to the company’s network. Because they want to perform daily tasks more efficiently, they eventually find a way to overcome all restrictions.
People can be very creative. Unfortunately, they are often not disciplined to comply with security standards (such as using a VPN). That’s why business-critical data can be easily exposed to various threats. Although shadow IT can be minimized, it cannot be eliminated. That’s why backing up data is a much simpler solution than monitoring employee activity, especially remote ones. Data backup is future-proof.
Understanding the BYOD trend
This trend requires extreme caution in terms of data safety as the users keep the private and corporate data on the same device. Things to remember:
- privacy becomes a problem in managing the BYOD security policy
- who is responsible for the company data that is on these devices?
- monitoring, encryption or deletion of data (here we mean private data) may lead to violating or threatening the privacy of the employee
Storware Backup and Recovery provides secure data containers, which simply separate the sensitive corporate data from the private content on personal device of an employee. In fact, data containers act as the storage area that is authenticated, encrypted and managed by organization’s data protection policy provided by Storware.
The proper response to BYOD is definitely influencing the increase of the mobile workforce productivity, letting employees to be online for most of the day, being able to check the business emails more often, also after business hours. Allowing your people to use their own device with their own apps also increases the work satisfaction.
There are many benefits of BYOD, but it also carries many risks related to the broadly understood security of IT infrastructure. That is why it is quite a challenge for IT departments, which are forced to introduce additional functionalities, changes in security policies, requirements for passwords or require remote access to our device. While organizations are aware of protecting servers and data centers, they still seem to ignore the importance of endpoint environment protection. Endpoints are able to carry lots of key corporate data, such as contacts, confidential documents, e-mails and more. Unfortunately, such devices are more likely to be stolen or damaged and they are more susceptible to ransomware attacks or data leakages. Therefore, it is mandatory to protect company data stored and processed on those devices.
