What are the risks of BYOD?

The bring your own device (BYOD) strategy lets employees use their personal mobile devices to do work for your company from anywhere. This strategy increases efficiency and convenience to your business, but it also brings a number of security risks to your IT infrastructure and data. If you’re thinking of incorporating BYOD in your office, consider the following risks before making a decision.

Data leakage

The biggest reason businesses are wary of implementing a BYOD strategy is because it can leave the company’s system vulnerable to data breaches. Personal devices are not part of your business’s IT infrastructure, which means that these devices are not protected by company firewalls and security systems.

Employees might also take work with them to places outside of your company premises that don’t have adequate security settings, thus leaving your system vulnerable to inherent security risks.

Lost devices

Another risk your company has to deal with is the possibility that employees will lose their personal devices. If devices with sensitive business information get lost and fall into the wrong hands, anyone can gain unauthorized access to valuable company data stored in that particular device. Therefore, you should consider countermeasures and protocols for lost devices, like remotely wiping a device of information as soon as an employee reports it missing or stolen.

Possible hacking

Personal devices tend to lack adequate data encryption to keep other people from snooping on private information. On top of this, your employees might not regularly update their devices’ software, rendering their devices and your IT infrastructure susceptible to infiltration.

Connecting to open WiFi spots in public places also makes your company vulnerable and open to hackers, because hackers may have created those hotspots to trick people into connecting. Once the device owner has connected to a malicious hotspot, attackers can see your web activity, usernames, and passwords in plain text

Vulnerability to malware

Viruses are also a big problem when implementing BYOD strategies. If your employees use their personal devices, they can access sites or download mobile apps that your business would normally restrict to protect your system.

As your employees have the freedom to choose whatever device they want to work with, the process of keeping track of vulnerabilities and updates is considerably harder. So if you’re thinking about implementing BYOD strategies, make sure your IT department is prepared for an array of potential malware attacks on different devices.

BYOD will help your business grow, but it comes with IT security risks that you should be prepared to handle.
Need help mitigating these BYOD risks? Call us today, and let’s find the best IT security solutions for your company.