Considering Top Benefits and Pitfalls While Managing BYOD

The latest IT trends and the increased use of cloud technology have enabled employees in the enterprise to integrate and make use of their personal devices to access their enterprise system and data. This work efficiency has led to bring your own device (BYOD) system, making it easier for the workforce to share information and complete assignments given.

Looking at reports, a majority of organizations globally have enabled BYOD to some degree to take advantage that it offers. Those include ensuring employee satisfaction, minimizing technology costs, enhancing production and opening ways for innovation. However, the surging popularity of BYOD can be challenging to secure remote work because moving organizational data onto the cloud is a dicey business if data is not secured properly.

The employees' myriad use of smart devices like smartphones, tablets and wearables also paves an entry point for cybercriminals to leverage and breach devices with the intention to target corporate data. According to a report, a number of companies have seen lack visibility into even basic mobile applications including email. So, to safeguard BYOD, organizations need to see and control user activity on all endpoints. And if they don't, organizations become vulnerable to unauthorized data sharing, malevolent accessing and an inability to salvage or wipe downloaded data from lost or stolen devices.

Here are the top security strategies enterprises can leverage to secure BYOD.

Mobile Device Management (MDM)

Mobile device management is used to define the administrative management of mobile devices. It is typically favored by large enterprises to impose security policies across the business-owned devices. MDM encompasses the process of implementing, monitoring, securing, integrating and managing devices within the workplace, enabling organizations to protect their corporate network while leveraging the functionality of mobile devices. However, it can be difficult and time-consuming for a company if the right tools not in the right place.

Mobile Application Management (MAM)

Mobile application management software enables enterprises to deploy and enforce corporate policies on mobile apps. Unlike MDM, MAM typically focuses on securing company-provided applications that involve sensitive data. It provides IT administrators with a more granular way to control and protect corporate data that is vital for BYOD. Since bring your own device system has paved its way to organizations increasingly, MAM is occasionally utilized to secure mobile data access. Despite this, it has its own limitations as it doesn't cover some prevalent cloud apps such as Gmail, Dropbox, Slack, among others.

Agentless Mobile Security

Agentless mobile security solutions protect data without requiring anything to be installed on an employee device. These solutions have the ability to provide MDM functions like preventing data loss and remote wiping of business data. Companies like Bitglass that is an agentless CASB (Cloud Access Security Broker), which provides enterprises comprehensive visibility and control over their data, even when it is being accessed by personal devices. CASB is a policy implementation point that delivers security of data in the cloud, on any device, anywhere. As cloud services and the use of BYOD will increase, the proliferation of agentless solutions will also continue to grow.