A recent survey published by Bitglass reported that 72% of organizations support the implementation of Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) in the workplace. The industry that leads the way in BYOD adoption is the financial services sector.
The survey included over 800 cyber-security professionals from different industries including the financial services, technology, healthcare, government and education sectors.
While BYOD continues to gain momentum, Mobile Application Management solutions (MAM) becomes a beacon of opportunity as only 14% of organizations surveyed reported that they had successfully deployed a tool to help them manage the devices brought in by their employees as part of BYOD programs.
"The level of concern with respect to security in BYOD is really no different than with other types of IT systems," Rich Campagna, vice president of products at Bitglass, told eWEEK. "Regulated industries such as health care and financial services require that large numbers of users handle personally identifiable information, and the success of their business depends on their ability to protect customer data. The fact that these users are often mobile and demand BYOD access makes security particularly challenging."
Balancing BYOD adoption with the implementation of security procedures is a tough task. One that fewer than half of enterprises are facing effectively. More and more organizations are relying solely on password protection to manage BYOD devices leaving aside important and basic security measures such as encryption and remote wipe.
"It seems that in an effort to support the demands of mobile users, security has been thrown out the window," Campagna said.
Our Executive Vice President of Marketing and Products, Todd Carothers offers a different possibility to address the issue of BYOD security. Creating and segmenting corporate apps would provide organizations with the ability to configure and manage the security controls that they deem are needed for their company.
The conversation will continue and industries and organizations will only benefit of the constant search for better and safer ways to deploy and implement BYOD programs. Learn how our enterprise unified communications solutions can give employees the freedom access to their work communication systems from their personally owned, preferred device, with full access to company directories, messaging and presence features.
Learn how our corporate VoIP solutions and services for corporate telephone systems can help SMBs realize immediate benefits like increased productivity, greater communication flexibility and cost savings.