8 Things You Should Do Before Allowing Personal Devices On your Network!

The rise of BYOD policy in the companies has made them cut on the cost factor but eventually gave rise to many risks. Most of the companies have initiated this practice to allow their employees to bring their own Smartphones or Laptops in the workplace. This cannot stop the companies to follow BYOD policy since a study reveals that this sector will have a growth size of $73.3 billion by the year 2021. Let us now see some eight significant ways to mitigate this BYOD risk in the companies.

1. Registration of Employee Devices

The companies must ask their employees to register their personal devices so that the organizational heads can keep an eye on the workforce who is using their own devices. The employees must keep this list updated in case they have stopped using a particular device or planning to sell it out. In this case, if there is some confidential company’s data or files accessed through their mobile devices or laptops, it can be wiped off by the IT department.

2. Encourage Software Updates

The launch of the latest OS to be used in the mobile or PC devices comes with various security patches and updates that support as the organizational data safety. With the installation of these updates, the companies can find solutions to the vulnerabilities that may have otherwise created lapses in the corporate network. Moreover, encouragement to the software updates is also recommended for the employees.

3. Create a Set of Responsibilities

The companies can create a set of responsibilities for both the IT department, and other employees present in the company.

• For IT employees in the organization, the responsibilities explained can relate to the assistance to other users in the companies, their network supporting hours, IT support to other employees, provision of assistance will be remotely or personally, etc. Even the responsibility of employee’s device maintenance and management needs to be checked.
• For other users in the company, they must not give the devices that they bring to the company to non-users, must not download third-party apps, must know about a cap on the apps that they can use along with an organization network, etc. 

4. Initiating Mobile Device Management

The MDM or Mobile Device Management provides BYOD control policy for the Smartphones and Tablets on the granular basis. Here, IT staff of the company can block certain apps on your devices, specify the number of users or the devices that can connect to company’s network, and put restrictions on the functions like camera or microSD card usage. Even AI can work well in this case as it supports users to register, erase information or lock their own mobile devices.

5. Providing Training to the Employees

The focus of every business house is to control the flow of confidential information into wrong hands. This can be done by training the employees about prevailing security threats in the industry, acknowledging them about what to do in case of lost devices, educating them about varied tips on the usage of the organizational apps.

6. Theft of Mobile or Laptop Devices

The increased number of crimes makes sometimes impossible for the users to avoid any kind of theft of their mobile or laptop devices. It is advisable to lock your devices with a password to keep the third party away from an access. Even the users must enable ‘Find my Device’ on their OS as in Apple, one can enable ‘Find My iPhone’ and trace out their device or wipe out the data remotely to stop anyone’s access.

7. Creation of Strong Passwords

The strong passwords will help users to secure their devices from any kind of external threats and save the company’s confidential information. As it can be seen that the hackers launch an attack with the help of malicious applications or use the password crackers. Your password must have special characters like numbers, symbols, letters, and this combination must be of eight or more characters.

8. Enable the Two-Factor Authentication or 2FA

If the employees of a company possess an access to the confidential data or files of an organization, then 2FA becomes mandatory. The companies must ask their employees to enable the two-factor if they are using external applications or any of the online accounts. This will lead to obstructing the hacker’s way to gain access to the user’s device through any of their E-mails or personal accounts.

Conclusion

To sum up, it can be seen that by following the right steps to avoid a potential leak of information under BYOD policy, the users can save a company’s data from losing. The organizations, on the other hand, can reduce the risks by training their employees and making strong IT policies.