Your Business and the dangers of ‘Bring Your Own Devices’

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By Gary Sargent  Vendor Relationship and IT Product Manager

Mobile security has become a seriously BIG concern within business IT, and for good reason.

It’s a relatively new issue, but it’s now really starting to dawn on a lot of companies that what is a terrific opportunity can also represent a threat.

What’s brought this about is the advent of the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) concept.

And this really taken off with the increasingly widespread use of highly portable smartphones and tablets. BYOD is quite simply causing a blurring of the lines between being at work or at home.

Great Productivity

BOYD staff can have access to their work wherever they are – at work, on the road, or at home.  This can can be great for productivity.

And, if staff are using their own kit, it can also save a business money because it doesn’t have to supply that same hardware.

The BOYD effect is fairly easy to track within a company. It’s usually caused by the trickle down effect.

It starts with the boss who comes into work with his or her new smart phone or tablet and wants it synched with the company’s network.

Others soon follow and, before you know it, you’ve got everyone using multiple devices to access the network.

But BOYD isn’t all positive.  It also comes with a challenge. Actually, two challenges.

Personal kit, whether it’s a laptop, mobile phone or tablet, is also used, not surprisingly, for personal use. That might be for the occasional game of Angry Birds or a thousand other uses.

Risk of malware

That means there is always the risk that malware or some other threat has been downloaded.   Once the device is connected to a business network, these nasties can infect the entire infrastructure, causing huge damage.

Such attacks are becoming extremely sophisticated.

The other obvious threat from BOYD is the ‘Whoops! I Left It On The Train’ syndrome.

We’ve all heard the stories of often hugely private digital information being left on a train or in some other public place.  These days, employees can be walking around with a very large amount of this kind of sensitive data on any of their devices – including their phone – and the loss of this could be seriously damaging (and costly), to a company.

How to tackle security?

The first thing to realise is that it used to be that malware attacks came from dodgy sites – now they can come from anywhere.

The old saying of ‘Think before you click’ has never been smarter advice.

On top of that, the risk of data loss is ever-present.

There probably isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution.

The important thing, though, is for companies to have a strategy on mobile security and to consider the implications of letting staff use whatever device they want – before it becomes widespread.

Staff also need to be clear about their responsibilities and undertakings.  For example, are they going to allow the company to remotely erase all data from their phone in certain extreme circumstances, like it is left on the proverbial train?

This way, when someone brings in their own kit, your company should have a policy and an agreed reaction.

Your options

You could ban BOYD, but that’s not only denying yourself the advantages of, it’s also just not a sensible option when the trend is so overwhelmingly for people to use their own equipment.

You can scan the equipment people bring in; but that can be very intrusive and many will consider it an invasion of privacy.

Or a virtual desktop is a possible solution.

This is where you log into a profile on the company’s server and off you go, working in whatever operating system that’s stored there for you, be it Windows 7 or whatever.  All your data is stored on the server and doesn’t travel with you.

Essentially, this is a Private Cloud, so the company remains in total control of the infrastructure.

The strength of this option is clearly dependent on the how powerful your password protection is before you can log into the server.  These days, the level of security can be very high indeed.

Data centres

Another option, which I think we’ll see much more of, is the use of The Cloud hosted by an external data centre.

The great thing about both these solutions is that multiple devices can all be synched with the server and the level of security can be dictated by the company.

And there are certainly other extra precautions to increase protection. You can also, for example, lock down devices so nothing can be introduced through a USB port.

There’s less of a drain on resources as everything is run from the server.  And what hardware you do provide doesn’t need to be especially powerful because you are running applications stored and run, not on your device, but on the server.

Creating open systems

In the past, IT departments had a lot of focus on control and keeping everything tightly ring fenced. Now they are more about how to allow an open system, but one that is still as secure as possible.

The best advice here is to talk to your IT supplier and check they have expertise in this area.  At CleverBoxes, we certainly see this as a big and expanding area that will become increasingly important to our clients.