With Bring Your Own Device and other more mobile tools becoming more and more common (especially with the number of people working from home right now) the ability for a business to retain control of their technology and their data is critical. To accomplish this, Mobile Device Management is an indispensable tool.
There are plenty of reasons - including employee satisfaction, productivity benefits, and cost savings, to boot - that many organizations have adopted BYOD (or Bring Your Own Device) policies. Having said that, it is important that you have a few guidelines and other policies firmly established concerning your employees’ secure use of their own devices… policies, such as:
While your employees will certainly need devices upon which to complete their work, this need can be a point of some contention. After all, every employee will have a preference when it comes to their device and its operation, a preference that doesn’t line up with the device you would supply them with. However, this tension may be relieved by implementing a BYOD policy.
What’s your plan if an employee loses a mobile device with company data on it? You’ll likely start by asking a lot of questions. When did they last use it? What locations did they visit? Of course, they don’t know--it could have been misplaced at the airport, forgotten in the cab, or left in the booth at a diner. Once you’ve determined that the phone is truly gone, what do you do next?
A Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy can be a great way to manage mobile devices. After all, if an employee brings in their own device to use for work, that’s one less device you have to provide (and foot the bill for). This is not to say that implementing BYOD is free of concerns, including data ownership and accountability. However, there is another concern to contend with when an employee uses a personal device for professional purposes: how can you be sure that the data you are reimbursing was used to benefit your business, and not to play Pokemon Go?
