The exponential rise in the number of mobile devices, IoT devices making inroads in the enterprise ecosystem, is empowering organizations to formally adopt and accept employee personal devices for corporate use. BYOD is known for its various advantages, viz. employee agility to work from their preferred locations and using their preferred (personal) devices, improved user productivity, crisis management from remote locations, and benefits for corporates due to the reduction in IT infrastructure costs. Following some proven best practices for BYOD, corporates can easily manage and reap long term benefits from BYOD.
If your company beginning its new journey to adopt this policy, then this will provide you with good insights! Here we have listed important BYOD Best Practices to help you get started and effectively manage employee personal devices in your organization. Although its benefits are aplenty, BYOD comes with its own set of risks and challenges.
Security related to employee personal devices at work is an important consideration which affects both employees and employers. Other factors that should be considered are diverse devices and OS platforms, legal compliance, and BYOD policies.
An effective BYOD management enables your employees to have secure access to corporate resources and data, with their personal devices. The enterprise IT team can configure and manage these devices (even remotely) without compromising employee privacy, with the help of an MDM solution.
BYOD best practices checklist to implement a successful Bring Your Own Device program.
Make security your priority
When it comes to device security, users are generally lax in securing their devices. Most users have simple passwords or share their devices or connect them to unsecured networks making them vulnerable to various attacks.
As a practice, you should assess all mobile devices used for work, identify vulnerabilities, secure your networks and grant limited access to corporate data based on employee role.
Train your employees
Educating your staff is vital to thwart attacks. Conduct training sessions, awareness programs and workshops to train them on how to secure their devices and ways to prevent security incidents inside or outside the organization. For instance, insist on no device sharing, applying strong passwords, and not connecting to open and free networks.
Decide on OS version and platform support
BYOD management becomes more complex when the IT team has to support various devices with different configurations, platforms, and OS versions. It also happens that some device or features become obsolete, but IT has to support them to ensure the security of each device.
To make the task a little less tedious, identify the OS version(s), platforms and hardware your organization would support.
Choose your Device Enrollment Program
For a successful implementation, each device has to register and authenticate itself before connecting to your network. This will allow network administrators to identify unauthorized access into the network. Invest in an effective MDM solution to register, configure, track, and monitor employee devices.
Define clear and robust BYOD policy
A clear, consistent, and robust policy is the centrepiece of an effective BYOD management. A BYOD policy should cover the following
Ensure consistency and compliance
Apply security rules for all employees of your organization irrespective of their position. Explain the policy to all stakeholders and obtain consent to ensure that all employee devices comply with the policy.
Audit and Scrutiny
Regular checks and audits of security policy implementation on all the devices will give you tremendous insights on security flaws and scope of improvement of your BYOD program.
At first, it will seem to be a massive effort to employ these best practices, but once a rigorous security policy and an effective management plan are in place, it will boost employee productivity and improve the overall functioning of your organization. Relying on a powerful and robust MDM solution for BYOD management is the most advised option to make it an overall success amongst employees and the IT team.
Vandita is a passionate writer and IT enthusiast. By profession, she is a Computer Lecturer at the University of Delhi and has previously worked as a Software Engineer with Aricent Technologies.
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