How to Manage the Risks of BYOD in a Work-From-Anywhere World

Considering how much the boundaries between our work and personal lives have blurred in the last year and a half, it's probably not a surprise that employees are using their personal devices to get work done. According to techjury, 67% of them are doing just that. Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is a fact of the modern workforce, especially as we move toward a work-from-anywhere world.  But how can you make sure your employees are using their own devices safely? And how can you make sure important, proprietary business information isn't shared on a company device? Here's a look at the state of BYOD today, why BYOD is so popular at many companies, and how you can manage the risks of BYOD.

The state of BYOD today

BYOD was already well established at many businesses before the pandemic, but it took off in a big way after employees started working from home en masse. Faced with the difficult task of balancing business productivity with public health, many companies embraced technology that would allow their employees to easily collaborate with colleagues and be productive from their improvised home office environments. With the freedom to use the devices they already owned and found familiar, employees were able to navigate this abrupt transition with a little less stress. BYOD and other remote work technologies helped employers and employees ride out the initial disruption of the pandemic, but it also introduced serious security risks. IT found it challenging to secure these new personal devices, or endpoints, as tightly as it could corporate-owned devices, where it had more control. According to techjury, 37% of companies cite security concerns as the main barrier to BYOD adoption, and 72% of companies cite data leakage or loss as their top security concern surrounding BYOD. Specifically, 56% of companies worry about unauthorized access to company data. They worry this could happen all too easily if employees download unsafe apps or content, or if their BYOD devices are lost or stolen.

The business benefits of BYOD

Given the risks of BYOD, one might ask why it's so popular in the first place. Businesses have good reason for encouraging the use of personal devices for work even given all these cybersecurity challenges. As Security Magazine points out, the global market for BYOD and enterprise mobility is set to more than double from $61.4 billion in 2020 to $157.3 billion by 2026. A BYOD-carrying employee works two extra hours per day on average, and the company generates $350 of value per employee each year by simply offering them the option to use their own device on the job.  Even the people who have to manage BYOD programs agree they're worthwhile - 69% of IT decision-makers in the US say BYOD is a good thing. Employees appreciate the flexibility of using their own smartphones for work, which helps them better balance their professional duties with their personal commitments. With increased employee satisfaction, businesses have a better chance of retaining and attracting talented employees. To maximize all these benefits, however, companies and their IT teams must manage the risks of BYOD. 

How to manage the risks of BYOD

To make sure employees are using their personal devices as securely as possible, your organization needs a clearly defined BYOD policy. This policy sets the expectations for how much control your company will exert over employees' personal devices if they are approved for business use. As TechTarget points out, there is no one-size-fits-all approach where this is concerned. Some companies treat BYOD devices just as they would corporate-owned devices, whereas others adopt a more permissive stance. Your business will need to evaluate the pros and cons involved in all of these cases and decide what's appropriate given the company's risk appetite.  As you weigh these issues, your IT team will need to consider how it will manage the BYOD device and the corporate data that employees may access from it or store on it. Many companies use tools like mobile device management (MDM) software to set granular permissions for how corporate data will be handled on BYOD devices. IT teams can also use MDM software to wipe a BYOD device if it is lost or stolen. Once the BYOD policy is finalized, employees should be required to sign it. Your IT team should determine how it will enforce these policies and make sure management agrees with this approach. It's also important to consider the role of password security in the work-from-anywhere world. Even with a rock-solid BYOD policy and a strong enforcement mechanism, your remote employees will likely encounter sophisticated cyber threats while logging in from home. A business password manager can help you reduce the likelihood of a breach by improving employee password hygiene and security without hampering employee productivity or creating IT complexity.  Not only does a password manager give employees a crucial heads up if their account credentials are found on the dark web, allowing them to change their passwords before a hacker comes calling, but its multi-factor authentication (MFA) capabilities can add a crucial layer of protection that keeps the door firmly shut in the event a malicious actor does knock on the door.  A password manager can make your remote workers' lives easier, too. Now that they're relying on the internet more than ever, they've also got more passwords to keep track of. Rather than having to remember them all, your employees can store them in an encrypted vault and easily access them from anywhere - including their BYOD devices.

Manage the risks of BYOD in the work-from-anywhere world

BYOD improves employee satisfaction, boosts internal productivity, and generates attractive financial incentives. Businesses have good reason to support BYOD arrangements, particularly now that so many employees are working from home. With hackers increasingly targeting remote workers, however, businesses must also carefully manage the risks that BYOD poses.  By taking smart steps like creating a BYOD policy and using a password manager to improve password security, your business can manage the risks of BYOD in the work-from-anywhere world. Learn how LastPass improves password security in the work-from-anywhere world.