There are several ways in which Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is helpful for firms across the country. It means that you don’t have to splurge on tech purchases for your employees. It also means that your employees can work remotely whenever they have their personal devices on them. However, these benefits are balanced by what is a significant risk of data breaches and hacks to personal devices, as opposed to the better-protected work devices you would otherwise be issuing. To counter these additional risks, take note of the tips provided below to help you keep BYOD a safe practice in your business.
Audit
All firms should take a special interest in the computers, phones, and tablets of their employees, to see whether they’ve been adequately protected. No computer should be able to access your firm’s sensitive data – let alone the data of your customers and other consumers – without having a secure computer signed off by your cybersecurity or IT team.
This should be as simple as conducting a half-hour test on a computer, to see where the weak links might be, and to tell your members of staff what they ought to do to protect their computers from cyberthreats properly. This audit is your first line of defense.
Cybersecurity
Of course, the purpose behind your audit is to see whether your staff are well-protected on their laptops, tablets, and phones. And this means cybersecurity. But it doesn’t mean simple cybersecurity – which often comes part and parcel with laptop computers bought on the consumer marketplace. It’s also about business-grade cloud security.
This type of security, helping to protect files stored online as well as on hard drives, is provided by cybersecurity leaders McAfee to help the BYOD revolution continue without a spate of cybersecurity breaches and hacks making headlines across the world. The key to this security is in protecting the bridge between the device and the cloud: this is the gray area into which many cybersecurity threats will attempt to hack. It’s your responsibility to secure this bridge alongside your staff.
Training
Nothing can be a better short-term fix for your cybersecurity concerns than training your staff in simple protection tips and insights. Some of your team may not be aware of the simplest of cybersecurity rules – like opening spam emails or visiting websites against which your browser warms. You need to ensure that your firm is getting on top of this, in partnership with staff, to protect computers across your business.
The key here is to bring in cybersecurity educators into your firm. Don’t rely on your IT professionals: they’re trained to fix computers and install software, and not to teach staff. The external help that you hire to train your team will ensure that your workers carry the good cybersecurity practices they learn in these classes back to their own devices, helping protect your firm amid the BYOD revolution.
Use the three tips outlined above to help you to protect your business data by protecting the devices workers across your firm.