The BYOD Problem

March 31, 2017 / G C Network / Comments Off on The BYOD Problem

The Endpoint Imperative: Global Security Compliance. Are you ready?

By G C Network | November 12, 2017

    China has its Cybersecurity Law. Next May, the General Data Protection Regulation – or GDPR –goes into effect for the European Union. Research shows most organizations just aren’t…

The Endpoint Imperative: IT Spending: Setting Priorities in a Volatile World

By G C Network | November 5, 2017

  Fast-evolving trends are changing the way IT thinks about security. To stay secure and productive, IT operations must excel at the fundamentals: PC refreshes for security, and optimizing end-user…

Top 1000 Tech Bloggers

By G C Network | October 24, 2017

The Rise “Top 1000 Tech Bloggers” leaderboard recognizes the most inspiring Tech journalists and bloggers active on social media. They use Klout scores (50%) and the blogger’s twitter conversations on…

IBM – The Power of Cloud Brokerage

By G C Network | October 14, 2017

Hybrid cloud adoption is now mainstream and you are making decisions every day about how to transform application and infrastructure architectures, service delivery, DevOps, production operations and governance. With Cloud…

More SMB Love Needed

By G C Network | September 29, 2017

    In a recent post, titled “10 Surprising Facts About Cloud Computing and What It Really Is”, Zac Johnson highlighted some interesting facts about cloud computing in the SMB…

ATMs Are IT Too!

By G C Network | September 5, 2017

That world of homogenous IT technology managed entirely by the internal IT organization has long disappeared.  Operations today require efficient and global management of technologically heterogeneous environments. The challenges and…

Digital Transformation Asset Management

By G C Network | August 30, 2017

Today’s businesses run in the virtual world. From virtual machines to chatbots to Bitcoin, physical has become last century’s modus operandi.  Dealing with this type of change in business even…

The Game of Clouds 2017

By G C Network | July 30, 2017

The AWS Marketplace is growing at breakneck speed, with 40% more listings than last year! This and more insights were revealed when CloudEndure used their custom tool to quickly scan the…

Managing Your Hybrid Cloud

By G C Network | July 14, 2017

Photo credit: Shutterstock   Runaway cloud computing cost may be causing an information technology industry crisis.  Expanding requirements, extended transition schedules and misleading marketplace hype have made “Transformation” a dirty word. …

American Airlines Adopts Public Cloud Computing

By G C Network | June 30, 2017

Did you know that the reservations systems of the biggest carriers mostly run on a specialized IBM operating system known as Transaction Processing Facility (TPF). Designed by IBM in the…

Everyone wants their device of choice right there next to them 24/7.  To an employer, however, that smart device is nothing more than a dagger posed to rip apart every shred of corporate security. This reality of modern business was highlighted by the Information Security Community on LinkedIn through their 2016 Spotlight Report on “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD). The key trends influencing enterprise BYOD and mobile security line up as follows:
  • Increased employee mobility (63%), satisfaction (56%) and productivity (55%) dominate as the top drivers of BYOD. These employee related drivers are considered more important than reduced costs (47%).
  • Security (39%) and employee privacy (12%) are the biggest inhibitors of BYOD adoption.
  • 20% of surveyed organizations have suffered a mobile security breach, primarily driven by malware and malicious WiFi.
  • Security threats to BYOD impose heavy burdens on organizations’ IT resources (35%) and help desk workloads (27%).
  • Despite increasing mobile security threats, data breaches and new regulations, only 30% of organizations are increasing security budgets for BYOD in the next 12 months and 37% have no plans to change their security budgets.

These trends clearly highlight the need for enhanced data and application security in enterprise mobility and cloud computing. They also reinforce the burden of securing data, applications, and devices that is being placed on the employer. Looking solely from the employer’s point of view, the report also summarized the mobility security concerns as follows:
  • 72% – Data leakage/loss
  • 56% – Unauthorized access to company data and systems
  • 54% – Downloading of unsafe apps or content
  • 52% – Malware
  • 50% – Lost or stolen devices
  • 49% – Vulnerability exploitation
  •  48% – Lack of control on endpoint security
  • 39% – Infrequent software updates
  • 38% – Compliance

These findings indicate that enterprise mobility is a very dangerous threat vector that can be ruinous to any business. Unmanaged or ungoverned use of devices can lead to loss of customers, loss of sales, and costly legal and financial fines. This truth led IBM to offer the following Ten Rules for BYOD:


1. Create your policy before procuring technology: To effectively use mobile device management (MDM) technology for employee owned devices Policy must precede technology. Also note that these policies will have broad corporate-wide implications for IT, HR, legal, and security.

2. Find the devices that are accessing corporate resources: Companies must completely understand the current landscape of mobile device usage. Doing this will require using a tool that can communicate continuously with your network environment and detect all connected devices connected.

3. BYOD Enrollment for employees should be simple: Complexity tends to breed non-compliance. To address this issue, the BYOD program should use technology that allows for a simple, low touch way for users to enroll. The process should also concurrently configure the newly enrolled device.

4. Configure your devices over-the-air: To optimize efficiency for both IT and business users, devices should be configured over-the-air. Policies to restrict access to certain applications should also be in-place.
5. Help your users help themselves: A robust self-service platform that lets users perform the following functions should be made available:

·         PIN and password resets
·         Geo-locate a lost device from a web portal
·         Remote wiping of sensitive corporate data
      
      6. Keep personal information private: A well-crafted BYOD program keeps personal employee data away from others. Communicate the privacy policy to employees and make it clear what data cannot collect from their mobile devices

      7. Keep personal information separate from corporate data: Corporate apps, documents, and other materials must be protected if the employee decides to leave the organization. Personal email, apps, and photos, however, should be left untouched.

      8. Manage data usage: The organization should be able to track in network and roaming data usage on devices, generating warnings should a user goes over their data usage or stipend limit.

      9. Continually monitor devices for noncompliance: Devices should be continuously monitored for certain scenarios, and automated policies should be in place. A few common issues are:
·         “Jailbreaking” or “rooting” a phone
·         Use of unapproved applications (like Angry Birds) that don’t rise to the level that requires an automatic wipe of the device
·         Providing a simple way to be alerted when a new OS is ready for installation and making it a self-service function.
      
      10. Enjoy the return on investment (ROI) from BYOD: Although BYOD shifts responsibility for purchasing devices to employees, it’s worth considering the big picture and long-term costs for your organization.
BYOD is now a corporate fact of life. If your environment includes traditional desktops and mobile devices, your organization may also need to consider working with a partner that has the specialized IT skills to migrate, integrate and maintain all types of IT network endpoints. IBM Mobile Virtualization Services should be considered as that partner in order to ease mobile user and application migration issues. Available services include:

This post was brought to you by IBM Global Technology Services. For more content like this, visit ITBizAdvisor.com.

Cloud Musings

( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS – © Copyright Kevin L. Jackson 2017)

Follow me at https://Twitter.com/Kevin_Jackson
Posted in

G C Network

Cloud Computing

Cybersecurity