These days, many organizations ask their employees to install and use the remote apps of the company on their personal smart phones. Every research on an organization’s technological system has shown that BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) programs are one of the major reasons of security issues. To understand the security risks, consider that your organization has as many devices as you have employees. Assuming each of those devices have 256 to 512 MB of memory, how much information do you stand to lose, or have compromised, if that device is lost or falls into the wrong hands?
In this technological world, more devices connect to an organization’s internal network, and also access content caches and business applications. If these devices are not monitored or governed, which many are not in BYOD programs, they can expose your company’s mobile networking to threats.
The three major security issues are privacy threats, explosion of file sharing tools and greater mobile access.
• Privacy Threats and Malware- Studies estimate that smartphone users have an average of 33-60 apps installed on their phones. With each app comes potential exposure of the corporate networking to malware. Even if the apps aren’t malicious, privacy threats are an issue because they have the ability to access, gather, and send your data. An acceptable-use policy can help your organization control the risk of third-party apps.
• Greater Mobile Access- The security risks are exponentially higher when you have more devices with more access than ever before. Creating a separate, secure mobile gateway is one way to mitigate these threats.
• Exploitation of File Sharing Tools- One of the most common mobile security solutions is the ability to lock or wipe out devices that have been lost or stolen. However, that solution doesn’t protect at all against cloud-based consumer file-sharing programs. The threat of lost and stolen devices pales in comparison to the threat of data leakage from these sharing tools.
These are some of the main factors which can account for risks if not addressed properly. You can minimize these security threats by availing cost effective security solutions for your enterprise’s devices connected through networking.