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*Article extracted from Dark Reading
Is there a safe way to let employees access
corporate data from their own mobile devices? Here are some things to think
about
Debra
Donston,Miller, Contributing Writer
Dark Reading
Dark Reading
September 15, 2013
[The following is
excerpted from "Ten Things to Consider When Developing BYOD Policy,"
a new report posted this week on Dark Reading's Mobile
Security Tech Center.]
BYOD, or bring-your-own-device, is a trend that is not going
away. In InformationWeek's 2013 State of Mobile Security report, based on a
survey of 424 business technology professionals, 68% of respondents said their
mobility policy allows employees to use personal mobile for work, with 20% saying
they are developing such a policy.
In fact, BYOD can hardly be called a trend anymore: The model
is here to stay in the enterprise, and it's expanding to include all manner of
employee-owned technology (including bring your own apps, bring your own private
clouds and bring your own WLANs). Organizations, therefore, must do more than
just bless the concept; they must proactively set out guidelines that tell
users what they can and cannot do, and that describe the role IT will and will
not play in the management, support and security of employee-owned devices.
"In today's always-connected society, organizations can
no longer let mobile device adoption in the workplace simply run its
course," says Steve Durbin, global VP of the nonprofit Information
Security Forum.
"By putting the right usage policies in place,
businesses can benefit from the returns that mobile devices can bring to the
workplace while limiting exposure to potential security risks," Durbin
says. "If executed poorly, a personal device strategy in the workplace
could face unintentional leaks due to a loss of boundaries between work and
personal data and more business information being held in an unprotected manner
on consumer devices."
One of the biggest challenges with BYOD is the ambiguity that
often surrounds the concept, especially when it comes to security. For example,
when the employee owns the device, who owns the data on the device when it's
being used to access corporate networks and data? To what extent can IT dictate
the level of security an employee-owned device must have?
These are just a few of the questions organizations are
dealing with, which is all the more reason for companies to develop a firm
policy, says Forrester analyst Christian Kane, whose research is focused on
desktop and mobile strategies, including BYOD.
"The biggest reason [to develop BYOD policy] is that
there is so much gray area in this topic," says Kane. "Many companies
have built their mobile strategies around the fact that they owned the devices
and could dictate what happens on them. So a big part of having a BYOD policy
in place really has to do with things that are ambiguous: What can I do and
what can't I do? What's the right kind of usage, and how does the company feel
about that?"
Research from the SANS Institute indicates a bit of a
Catch-22 when it comes to BYOD policy: The complexities of BYOD increase the
need for policy, but BYOD complexity makes it challenging to develop policy.
"With such complex issues to address, it's no wonder
that 50% of survey respondents either don't have policies to support BYOD
devices or they depend on the user to comply with corporate policy for securing
these personally owned devices," the March 2012 SANS report "SANS
Mobility/BYOD Security Survey" states. "Only 41% feel strongly that
they have policies to support BYOD, of which 17% are standalone policies and
24% are integrated as an aspect to their overall security policies.”
To find out more about what enterprises are doing to
facilitate BYOD -- and for the full list of 10 points to consider when writing
your own policy -- download
the free report.
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