What are BYOD & BYOA?

BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) is an IT rule where it is allowed or even actually encouraged for the employees to access and interact with corporate systems, documents and data by their private devices – home workstations, notebooks, smartphones and tablets. It’s common, when BYOA (Bring Your Own App) joins BYOD enabling employees to use apps of their own on their BYOD-covered devices that may elevate their everyday work efficiency, but not contained within the corporate software inventory.

Benefits and Threats

It may save a significant amount of investments for your organization if there is no need to purchase a certain part of infrastructure that enables employees to fulfill their everyday tasks, but you have to face the possibility that enabling your colleagues’ private devices into your corporate network, emails and data may pose data protection and security risks. When an employee connects his/her smartphone to your intranet, downloads and stores corporate documents and later the device go missing, then your valuable corporate data may end up in wrong hands, causing serious damages to your organization. With Grayteq DLP’s wide range of data protection features, you could significantly reduce all risks that may arise in relation with implementing BYOD/BYOA. In the other hand, you shall be aware of the fact that these “security measures” and “feature-restrictions” may cause discomfort for certain employees, may harden to access to corporate documents or in specific cases may cause the loss of complete control over his/her private device. Any discrepancies might be avoided by proper communication and properly set security rules you may keep your data security level high and allow your colleagues to keep control over their devices.

Six questions of BYOD & BYOA

1. Is your network ready for the tasks may arise in accordance with the entry of private devices?
2. Is your Help Desk capable of managing the elevated level of support tasks that may surface during the initial period of BYOD/BYOA implementation?
3. Are the devices, operating systems and apps safe that your BYOD/BYOA implementation may involve?
4. Are new services ready for implementation?
5. Are security-, management rules and processes ready for implementation?
6. Are your employees aware of the possible security risks?

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