Unless you have been hiding away, almost all businesses are now embracing the Cloud to some extent. Being able to work from any location at any time has had a massive impact on how we work. The increasing mobility with which users want to work has meant that they often prefer to use their own devices such as smartphones and tablets. And this means that businesses now need to adopt strategies to manage the use of employees’ own devices.  Whilst Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) might not be something you have actively encouraged, it is entirely likely you have adopted it within your business, possibly without being completely aware!

Most employees are using mobile devices for work-related tasks. This is often being performed via devices provided by the business. But in many instances, users prefer to use their own personal devices to access business resources. This in itself brings a number of unique challenges that directly impact your businesses security and data integrity. Cisco highlighted in their 2019 Cyber series the benefits of introducing device management.

But what should you consider in your business and how can you manage the many devices being used throughout your business without an intrusion of the user’s privacy?

It’s important to take a light-touch approach to BYOD devices due to the obvious ownership of such devices. Solutions are available that are completely cloud-centric and enable auto-updates to keep your devices secure and up to date. This is important when managing your estate to keep track of the devices being used.

If you are implementing or are already making use of BYOD, you need to have security policies in place to help mitigate the risk of a data breach. Enforcing pins and passcodes is an example of a simple policy you can introduce. You can look at more complex policies that will block access to corporate resources if your device isn’t running the latest version of the relevant operating system. Whatever you decide to implement, adopting consistent policies will pay off in the long term.

Implementing a solution that provides visibility into your BYOD estate is a very powerful tool when trying to increase security within your business. Being able to quickly and efficiently see which devices are in use and which ones are out of date can help you maintain levels of security. From this, you will have the ability to develop and introduce organisational policies that will enforce device compliance and educate staff on their responsibilities if they want to use their own devices. Duo provides a solution to view overall device hygiene within your organisation.

When considering device management and BYOD in any organisation it is important to understand the risks it can bring. BYOD will allow employees to access corporate data and resources from whatever device is most convenient for them, so adopting robust solutions and policies to grant access will help reduce your risks. If you are concerned about the risks posed by BYOD and want to know more about device management solutions, please contact us.