Ensuring Device Posture Compliance In A Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) Workplace

In a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) workplace, employees can bring their own personal devices to use for work-related activities. This includes laptops, tablets, smartphones and so on.

Considering that these devices are for employees’ personal use, they usually have weak security measures. Attackers can use vulnerabilities in these devices to access an organization’s network and carry out theft and other harmful activities.

Therefore, it is important for companies to monitor these devices through the device posture security rules. In case there is a mismatch between policy and posture, the administrators are instantly notified to take further actions.

Implementing BYOD policies is one of the most effective ways to ensure device posture compliance in a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) workplace. These policies encourage the employees to implement strong security measures in their devices when connecting to the company’s network.

Device Security Checklist

Device posture is the best method to inspect whether the devices are suitable for connecting to the corporate network. It mainly checks whether the devices comply with the multiple predefined rule sets.

If an unknown device is connected to the network, it instantly notifies the IT admins. It enforces the rule centrally and provides you with a centralized asset catalog that includes the current state of critical device posture checks.

This security check can also generate an audit report for you which will help you access and analyze the results of the Device Posture Check. Here is a list of a few items that you need to consider when connecting your personal device to your company’s IT infrastructure:

• You should have a high-quality and up-to-date anti-malware program installed on your device
• Make sure that your hard drives are fully encrypted
• In case you’re not good at identifying phishing links, make sure to have anti-phishing protection installed on your laptop
• You should make sure that your device is password protected
• Keep your operating system up-to-date with the latest security patches
• Make sure that the firewalls are enabled

Best Practices for Implementing BYOD Policy in the Workplace

If implemented correctly, the BYOD policy can bring convenience to the employees and cost savings for the companies. Therefore, you should consider investing in the right skill set to align your IT infrastructure with the needs of BYOD. The first step in creating BYOD policies is understanding the organization’s requirements. Different organizations have different structures, industries, sizes, and regulatory policy requirements. Therefore, each organization has a unique way of adopting BYOD technology.

Once you’re well aware of your organizational needs, you may start working on developing a flexible BYOD policy. These policies should be created considering different user roles, privileges, and controls as part of your mobile strategy. You should respect the end-user’s privacy and ensure the workflows are simple and automated.

To cater to evolving business landscape needs, make sure to future-proof your BYOD strategies. Once implemented, BYOD usage should be tracked and monitored in real time through intelligent mobile device management. Make sure to check the metrics that tell you about your network security and traffic. You must have a bird’s eye view of how the users and apps access corporate information.

How to Manage BYOD?

The main goal of BYOD is to give employees the freedom to work from their own devices instead of depending on office equipment. It is expected that BYOD workplaces also help increase employees’ productivity in the long run. Before an organization adopts this model, it should carefully consider the risks and challenges that might come with it.

Also, before the employees download potentially sensitive data to their devices, the network administrators should run the Mobile Device Management (MDM) functions. The purpose of these functions is to control the use of mobile devices in compliance with organizational policies.

Your company should focus on establishing a culture of trust and loyalty. Employees should be educated about the security risks related to Shadow IT practices. Furthermore, adequate reasons and pathways should be provided to the team members so that they can avoid security malpractices.

With the right tools, business organizations can transform their IT by creating BYOD policies aimed at empowerment and advancement. For instance, you can invest in advanced Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) to enable IT administrators to cater to the evolving BYOD needs of the workforce.

Wrapping up:

In the BYOD workplace, there is a big chance that a potentially harmful device gets connected to the company’s network and does the harm. Therefore, an employee’s device needs to be inspected for potentially harmful elements before it can be connected.

This is done in a process called device posture security inspection. Considering the digital transformation that has occurred over the past few years, incorporating BYOD policies is not even up for debate anymore.