Bring your own device (BYOD) is no longer simply a buzzword or a new trend; it’s reality. And in that reality, almost half of all employees use their own devices to access corporate assets such as network drives, documents, printers, web proxies, social media sites, and personal cloud services. Malware, viruses, theft, unsecured devices, jailbroken devices, and a lack of control put corporate data, intellectual property, and client information at risk. The answer to this problem is to create, to manage, and to enforce BYOD policy guidelines to secure your work environment.
Bring Your Own Device Without Worry Thanks to GFI LanGuard®
Written by: Christina Goggi
One of the big buzz words in IT for the past several years has been BYOD (Bring Your Own Device). BYOD scenarios are starting to crop up everywhere, from small businesses all the way up to federal government agencies. One of the biggest challenges SysAdmins, security professionals and CIOs all face is how to secure these devices.
One trend that is growing in popularity involves the approach of “securing the data, not the device”. While that sounds great and should definitely be a part of your security strategy, if you think you can get away with securing your data while ignoring all those devices, you are only a breaking news story away from a very embarrassing situation. Defense in-depth strategies require you to secure more than just the data, and the devices your users use are a key component, whether you paid for them or they did.
Hackers Find the Internet a Target-Rich Environment Thanks to Poor Patch Management
You would think that with things like automatic updates, applications that can automatically patch themselves, and the constant media attention towards security, hackers would be a dying breed, bereft of targets which they can exploit. Unfortunately, poor patch management practices across the board means that the ever-growing number of connected devices are providing hackers with and endless supply of fresh victims.