BYOD Security Risks and Solutions

Did you know that there are nearly 1 billion smartphone users worldwide? Because of this popularity, and because of their efficacy, many businesses, and even schools, are using the Bring Your Own Device model because of the benefits to both employees/students, and school districts/companies.

The biggest problem with this BYOD model is Android and iPhone security. According to web security news site SearchSecurity, “When BYODs bypass inbound filters normally applied to corporate devices, they’re vulnerable to malware—a fast-growing risk, particularly in regard to Android devices. BYODs that bypass outbound filters elevate risk of non-compliance with data privacy laws and regulatory requirements. As BYOD use grows, so will the frequency of these risky behaviors.”

Thankfully, there are now advances in encryption and authentication protocols that have been dealing with this issue to ensure employee compliance with company security requirements. For example, the Advanced Encryption Standard algorithm (AES) is a data-scrambling system published in 1998 regarded to be unbreakable and adopted as a U.S. government standard in 2001.

One of the most common ways to deal with iPhone security is to hire iPhone management and mobile device management services. Some of the common iPhone security features that these services render include firewalls, intrusion prevention, anti-malware, anti-virus, application control, data loss prevention, web content filtering, and two-factor authentication.

Apple’s latest iPhone, the 5S, introduced a new hardware addition, the bio-metric fingerprint scanner, that should hopefully bolster iPhone security as well. According to tech news site Proofpoint, “Touch ID promises to leverage such high-resolution images that it would be exceedingly difficult for casual hackers to create a clone from a smudge encountered on an average surface and break into a device.”

BYOD provides immense satisfaction to everyone involved, though it does pose security. Thankfully, as time goes on and technology advances, these risks can be mitigated with new iPhone security features. If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments!