Scary BYOD Data Protection Trends: 10 Common Problems

by Chris Preimesberger

Despite the continued onslaught of personal devices in the workplace as a result of BYOD trends, approximately 60 percent of companies still don’t have a BYOD policy in place. With employees often preferring to work on tablets, cell phones and laptops, companies need to adapt to the changing times and find ways to embrace the BYOD movement and help employees work securely on personal devices.

Nearly 80 percent of organizations reported that they have not even educated employees on BYOD best practices, risks or procedures. This careless BYOD behavior can put sensitive company data in jeopardy with potentially devastating effects if it falls into the wrong hands.

Of the approximately 40 percent of companies that actually do have a personal device policy in place, 24 percent make exceptions for executives. Because corporate executives are likely the ones working with the most highly sensitive data in the company, this seems counterintuitive for data protection and security. After all, a CEO’s tablet is just as susceptible to theft as an intern’s.

Nearly one-third of respondents are still in denial about BYOD, forbidding any personal devices to access the company network. Banning personal device use is largely unrealistic in today’s day and age and may actually hinder productivity and collaboration advantages. Instead of mandating an unsustainable policy, with the proper policies and education, personal device use can be safely and securely incorporated into company settings.

Despite restricted personal device usage, many employees recognize the productivity gains of BYOD and will find workarounds, potentially using insecure cloud apps like Dropbox to share corporate files between devices. This is a problem all by itself, because 67 percent of organizations don’t have a policy in place around public cloud usage.

Surprisingly, only 31 percent of organizations mandate simple security precautions such as a device password or keylocks on personal devices, putting sensitive data all the more at risk for theft, corruption and hacking. Such simple procedures can go a long way to ensuring sensitive data remains safe and secure. But the majority of enterprises that have BYOD security policies in place are overcomplicating things: 68 percent use VPN or secure gateway connections across networks and systems.

Part of creating a secure mobile device policy is accounting for personally owned devices entering and leaving the workplace, which is often referred to as the take-your-own-device (TYOD) trend. If not properly managed through processes like remote wipe, TYOD could cause major data leakage; however, only 21 percent of those surveyed perform remote device wipes when employees leave the organization.

Even though 65 percent of enterprises plan to support Macs in the next 10 months and 75 percent in the next two years, companies may not be as prepared as they thought. It turns out that 57 percent of organizations claim that compatibility and interoperability are still big obstacles to getting Macs compliant with IT. This puts data stored on Mac/Apple devices at even greater risk.

BYOD carelessness is jeopardizing confidential data, exposing it to theft, corruption, hackers and malware, which has the potential for devastating effects, including contributing to the $2.1 million loss in system downtime organizations were found to experience every year.

So, what can be done to ensure data is safe amid BYOD trends? Below are five BYOD survival tips for keeping data safe and secure in light of increasing personal-device use on corporate networks: Tip 1: create a mobile device security policy; Tip 2: stop making exceptions to your policy; Tip 3: make “safe BYOD” everyone’s responsibility; Tip 4: prepare for the coming of Apple; and Tip 5: don’t underestimate the dangers of public clouds.