Minding Your PDQs with BYOD

One of the hottest topics in IT management right now is Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) -- employees using their own personally-owned smartphones and tablets for work purposes. There's no point questioning whether or not to allow it: according to Forrester Research, more than half of employees are already using their own devices for work, and the IT research giant predicts that BYOD will be standard policy within 3 years. From a business point of view, BYOD is great news. Your employees can be productive anywhere using the tools they like best, and their devices don't come out of your budget. But from IT's perspective, BYOD is a potential security nightmare. If an employee's mobile device is lost or stolen, your company could lose control of sensitive information — bank accounts, donor lists, patient records, investment account — and incur significant business, legal, fiscal, and reputational damage. But since your employees are using multiple operating systems on a seemingly infinite variety of devices, each running an ever-changing array of apps, there's no one-size-fits-all way to protect that information. As a BYOD company ourselves, Xantrion is extremely familiar with the privacy and security concerns BYOD raises, as well as the mitigating measures companies can take. We've evaluated the leading mobile device management solutions and identified which ones best suit specific situations. We also understand the operational best practices, like organization-wide BYOD policies and employee training, that optimize the effectiveness of technical controls. Letting employees use their own mobile devices doesn't have to mean losing control of your business data. Call us today for help sorting through your many options and developing a custom-tailored BYOD strategy.