final thought
Mobility Mayhem
The freedom to use your own device for work may seem like a
convenience, but with great convenience comes great security
risk. Anurag Kahol, CTO at Bitglass discusses the security
solutions available when it comes to the mobile workforce.
T
he typical nine to five is
no longer. Employees
now get emails on their
personal phones, have
transatlantic business
calls outside normal working
hours and continue to work at
home on laptops and mobiles
over the weekend. The ability
for employees to use their
personal devices (BYOD) to access
corporate information is great for
productivity; they are no longer
confined to getting everything
done within a certain number
of hours or within the company
walls. However, if left unmanaged,
accessing company data from
a personal device can create a
number of security implications.
No visibility equals
vulnerability
When an employee leaves the
corporate network behind
and accesses corporate
email and files directly from
their unsecured device, the
organisation loses its traditional
ability to protect corporate data
as it would within the network.
This means that an employee
could unintentionally upload
a virus within a corporate
document when out of the office,
or bring an infected device to
46 | October 2017
work and enable it to permeate
the company network.
Outside of work, IT teams
have no visibility into employee
activity when files are downloaded
to a personal mobile device. This
means that an employee could be
sharing data in an inappropriate
way, and the IT team would have no
idea. What’s more, if an employee’s
device is stolen, an unknown
hacker could gain access to troves
of corporate data, or even commit
identity fraud and attempt to login
to the employee’s email – all with
the IT team being none the wiser.
So, what’s the solution?
Banning BYOD certainly isn’t
the way forward. For employees
who work from home, travel for
business and need mobile access to
corporate data, restrictions around
the use of BYOD can be incredibly
counterproductive and frustrating.
Such restrictions would be archaic
in today’s connected world, and it’s
likely that an annoyed employee
would simply find ways to work
around them.
Some organisations have
turned to mobile device
management (MDM) and mobile
application management (MAM) in
a bid to get a handle on corporate
data. These tools involve an agent
being installed onto the employee
device, giving IT teams total control
and visibility of the endpoint.
Whilst this might sound
appealing to the IT team, it’s
a solution to be considered
hesitantly, because many
employees are wary of having such
software on their personal device.
This is because the software agent
on the device can track the person’s
location, see which applications
are installed and even see their
browsing history and personal
files and photos. Ultimately, many
see MDM and MAM as an overly
invasive means of securing BYOD.