Ever since the proliferation of mobile devices into mainstream consumers, organizations have been noticing an uptick in how consumers use technology for work. As work becomes more flexible and employees choose to work from home and the road, this has led to the rise of Bring Your Own Device, or BYOD. Research firm IDC has noticed this trend as well and estimates that 105 million employees will work remotely by the year 2020.
The benefits of BYOD are many but also bring challenges that include security and privacy. With so many devices secured differently through hardware and software, organizations can find it difficult to allow their employees to work locally on their devices. Luckily, cloud computing can help in the following ways:
- Leveraging Hosting Services: Having applications supported locally on the phone opens organizations up to security breaches. Cloud-based applications on the other hand, provide more peace-of-mind as providers take care of the security and application update pieces.
- Adoption of Firewalls: Secure phones in the cloud don’t stop at applications. Many times employees will also access company information on unsecured wireless networks, leading to potential breaches. In response, IT leadership can also look to the cloud to adopt domain name server (DNS) firewalls that can lower the chance for breach.
- Permissive Lists: For organizations that focus more on proprietary software that exists in the cloud or on-premises, developing permissive lists can be helpful. Permissive lists ensure that only the right people can access information based on their designated devices and device profile. This is sometimes known as a “Restrictive BYOD Policy”.
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