What is BYOD Risk? 

The companies who use cloud communications are adopting BYOD or Bring Your Own Device policy. However, this policy can get prone to the cyber risks most of the times. The big reason is that the work forces using their own Smartphones, Laptops, and Tablets that leads to the compromise on data security. This leads to a security breach to the corporate data as the employees will be accessing the same network for sharing files, addressing the device compatibility issues, and using an open Wi-Fi.

Six BYOD Security Risks your Business Should know about!

The encouragement to this Bring Your Own Device policy also comes with a few terrible risks as:

1. Lack of Managerial Power

The organization cannot control the employees fully when they are using their own laptops or mobile devices to transfer important documents. The employers cannot always check whether they are using the shared Wi-Fi or if any case the data was leaked because their device was stolen or damaged. For this, it becomes necessary for the IT pros to keep an eye on the network security layer so that the device is not exposed to vulnerable attacks. However, it is not possible most of the times since IT professionals are keeping a track of everything in the company right from the network, to correcting the hardware or installing the right software.

2. Untrained Employees in an Organization

With BYOD policy, the increased risk of virus attacks has been witnessed in the companies. Many times the employees may download a malicious application or click on the phishing link just using their own judgments. This will not only hack their devices but the company’s sensitive information will also go into the hands of the cyber criminals. The lack of training and the awareness on the part of the employees leads to cyber attacks. The employees just keep their mobile devices or Laptops open that gives an access to non-employees at their home or any meeting place that is the biggest security concern.

3. Open to Vulnerable Attacks

The top-notch bosses have lesser access to employees Smartphones, Tablets, and Laptops that ultimately means vulnerable attacks on their devices. This may happen when the employees are connecting to an external Wi-Fi hotspot and other internet connections that do not have any security layer. According to a survey, the devices of 97% of the employees have the privacy issues, and the other 75% lacked any kind of data encryption in their devices. It straightaway means that the employees do not use any kind of firewall or anti-virus in their devices.

4. Loss of Employees Devices

This is the biggest problem faced by the employees since it’s seen that either they lose their device by keeping it by mistake at any place or it has been stolen. Both these situations are alarming for the employers since BYOD policy makes your device a kind of organization’s device with a large amount of company’s data stored into it. Moreover, until the time the employees do not get their device the productivity is also affected. If in any case, it lands in the wrong hands then the data present in your device is compromised.

5. Installing Risky Applications from the App Stores

The mobile apps downloaded from the Android or the Apple App Store can certainly pose risk even if they are legitimate apps that come with security keys. The risk grows manifold when the employee’s device contains sensitive data related to the company’s work and its files. The Unvetted Apps, especially like an unapproved E-mail, can pose a major risk as many employees submit the login information that synchronizes the organizational data. This can further lead to big losses if the employees are not aware that which apps to use and which are not under BYOD policy.

6. The threat to Cloud-Based Storage

With the cloud system, used for storage of a large number of files and data of the companies gives way to an open treasure hunt for the hackers. The secure policies related to the cloud-storage are still on minimal front and are not applied in the companies as a whole. On the other hand, the use of employees own devices at workplace increases the risk of storing the data forms in the cloud storage systems that are insecure.

Conclusion

Finally, the BYOD policy where on one front has made the employers to cut on the costs of installing the devices at the workplace but on the other hand this has made the secured company data opened to many risks. With this policy at hand, many companies still face great security leaks most of the times.