How BYOD is Changing the Needs of Enterprise Security - And What Companies Can Do About It

BYOD, or Bring Your Own Device, is changing the enterprise security landscape, from its needs to the standards to follow and the Client-Side Protection solutions available in the market.

What are the pros and cons?

How can firms reduce risks?

Why can Jscrambler help?

How is Jscrambler the right tool to adopt a BYOD policy?

Every time you turn around, a new electronic device hits the market. This, plus the rise in “Bring Your Own Device” popularity, means that more and more employees are bringing their devices into the workplace.

While this may sound like a win-win arrangement, it’s not all good news. When and if these personally owned devices are lost, stolen, or hacked, companies could potentially lose millions of dollars.

Here’s a look at what BYOD is and how to adopt a BYOD policy.

What is BYOD?

Bring Your Own Device is the policy permitting employees to bring personally owned mobile devices (laptops, tablets, and smartphones) to their workplace and to use those devices to access privileged company information and applications.

The Benefits: What Does BYOD Have to Offer?

Companies do have some compelling incentives to implement a BYOD policy. The associated payoffs of doing so include reduced spending on hardware and software and more comfortable and productive employees.

• Cost Savings: Allowing employees to utilize their devices shifts the hardware and software costs to the employee.
  
  

• Boosted Employee Morale: Employees no longer need to carry, charge, and care for multiple devices; they are also frequently more comfortable using their gadgets instead of IT department-supplied ones.
  
  

• Increased Productivity: Employees are frequently more comfortable with their devices, which leads to better familiarity. In turn, this leads to more productivity.
  
  

The Dangers of BYOD: What to Watch Out For

The advantages of a BYOD policy are certainly convincing, but they’re not without their risks.

Allowing employees to access critical company data opens up the possibility of costly repercussions if the devices are lost, stolen, hacked, or otherwise infected with malware.

• Risk of Loss: Theft or hacking, as the loss of devices with limited password protection is a concern; also, increased consumerization in the workplace can lead to higher risks of threats such as hackers and viruses.
  
  

• Risk of Unwitting Employee Error: By not having any policies, there is no employee training and no set standard for what is or is not allowed.
  
  

• Increased Cost to IT: The financial effects of BYOD can go either way. On the one hand, shifting the cost to the employee can save the company money. On the other hand, though, it can just be more expensive.
  

Allowing user-supplied devices also means the IT department will have a wider range of devices to integrate and manage within the company infrastructure.

What Can Companies Do to Minimize Their Risk?

The decision to implement a BYOD policy or not belongs to the company. If you do decide to proceed with a BYOD policy, keep in mind:

• Ensure due diligence is conducted to weigh the risks versus the rewards when deciding if a BYOD policy is right for you.
  
  

• Take the time to plan; not having one means that BYOD will just happen without control.
  
  

• Security. A large majority of companies admit that mobile enterprise security is a huge challenge, so companies must seek out the proper technologies that will be used to manage and secure these user-supplied mobile devices. And they should also estimate the financial drain that this may put on the IT department.
  
  

• Communicate your BYOD policy: Educating employees on the proper use and security measures that come with a BYOD policy is key to keeping your company's data secure. Take the time to ensure employees understand the associated risks and what their role is in minimizing them.
  
  

What does JScrambler offer to Minimize The Risk?

Because employees bring their own devices, to which you will never have access nor be in a position to require third-party security software to be installed, the best you can do is provide your internal applications with self-defending capabilities.

Maybe you have already heard about Jscrambler Self-defending, which you get out-of-the-box with Jscrambler since version 3.5.

Another option you should consider is to give applications the capability to defeat Man-in-the-Browser (MitB) attacks, bots, 0-day threats, and APT (Advanced Persistent Threats), and Jscrambler can help you with that too.

See how Jscrambler can help you secure your data and web applications and minimize or prevent risks.

In both cases, no changes or setups need to be made on the end-user device. Protection can be delivered within the application as a part of it, with no additional requirements or application changes.

To conclude, if you decide to adopt BYOD, go for it. Ensure that your applications enjoy state-of-the-art technologies that protect them against threats.

See how Jscrambler can protect your business and website. Request a demo.