One
current IT trend is a perfect example: allowing your employees to use their own
smartphones and tablets on your corporate network. Letting employees access
business information on personal devices wouldn't be so popular if it didn't
have obvious benefits. On the other hand, it also has some potential drawbacks
you may not have considered.
Imagine
one of your employees losing a smartphone to a street thief. It shouldn't take
a huge stretch of imagination -- smartphone-related street crime is growing
nationwide and now accounts for more
than half of all robberies in San Francisco. (In fact, one of our own team
members was recently waiting at a bus stop when someone ran up and snatched an
iPhone from the hands of the person standing next to her.)
Now,
imagine your employee emailed himself an unencrypted document containing
sensitive data like banking information, health records, or Social Security
numbers. He intended to retrieve and work on it later on a secured laptop, but
all his email gets pushed to his now-stolen smartphone, too. That document is
now out of your company's control.
Granted,
most thieves simply wipe stolen devices and resell them, but money and business
secrets aren't the only things you could lose. With privacy laws requiring you
to disclose the loss of confidential information, you now face potential fines
for noncompliance -- not to mention the hit to your company's reputation.
Theft
shouldn't be your only worry, either. What if you're accused at a trade show of
trying to steal a competitor's business secrets by taking photos with the
personal phone you also use for business? If your accusers seize your phone to
copy its contents, they now have access to all your personal and corporate data. If you refuse to
turn over your phone, your competitor may sue and subpoena its contents, which
puts your company at risk of both a data breach and a hefty legal bill.
Security
breaches often happen for one of these reasons:
1.
You didn't follow your own data security policies.
2.
Your data security policies aren't reasonable or realistic.
3.
You don't have data security policies to begin with.
Let
Xantrion help. We'll work with you to find the holes in your data security,
patch them, and create security policies that make sense for the needs of your
business. Contact us today to schedule an assessment.
