The Way Byod Impacts Security

By Author: Martin Lobo
Total Articles: 355
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Implementing the concept of “BYOD” i.e. bring your own device to work can often result in major cost-savings for organizations. However, any enterprise should not adopt it without having the apt safeguards in place. Though making use of personal devices can allow employees remain more proactive and reduce the requirement to spend on devices, there can be certain risks in case BYOD is managed inappropriately.

BYOD and Business Security
According to certain industry experts, the BYOD movement is a small component of a huge issue that is mobile security. It is indicative of a shift that we work with data as a society. The BYOD concept has caused a meeting point between productivity, availability, and security that has not been seen before. Without proper security in place, office employees can put essential data as risk. When an employee opens a file on their personal device, that document automatically goes in the hands of their personal security settings and its absence thereof. Personal devices can be insecure and ...
... vulnerable to hacking and theft than company devices. Sometimes an employee can lose a device with critical data and that can pose a risk to the company.

The expectation that the personal devices can be utilized in business settings is a logical extension of mobile phone uses, but it also creates certain concerns in the way IT functions in a business setting. For a first time the end users are creating an IT expectation than the standard and practices being developed by the IT departments. Organizations of any size today are scrambling in order to attain the advantages of BYOD without doing away with the control of valuable data.

Industry Solutions for BYOD
Today service providers specializing in application performance, application availability, SSL VPNs and Server Load Balancing solutions have come up with advanced application-based remote desktop solutions in order to implement BYOD - Bring Your Own Device that helps the workers to access, physical or virtual office desktops and applications from any location. A user can be operating from their home PC’s, laptop at a partner site, or an Android, iPhone or iPad device and can work in a way that they are placed in their office having access to all the required documents without the fear of data leaving the network.

The BYOD remote desktop appliance is installed on the corporate network and can integrate with the present identity management solutions to set up user credentials. Virtual or physical office desktops and applications are registered for mobile and remote access by the IT, end users or automatically through a database.