Jan 20, 2016

There's been a lot of talk recently about the bring-your-own-device trend sweeping the nation. This is where companies set up a policy where employees can bring in their own gadgets and use them for work purposes, whether it's for simple emails or more complex computing needs. There are a lot of advantages to this trend, as well as a lot of disadvantages, and it's really up to each company to decide whether or not its business model is right for BYOD. 

Sadly, many workers simply don't care what their employer wants and use their devices without consent. While this is a flagrantly disrespectful act in itself, it also opens your company up to a lot of security headaches. 

Personal devices are in your workplace

While you'd like to think you can trust your employees to follow the guidelines you've set up for the office, the numbers point to a different reality. Gartner recently conducted a survey of more than 4,300 employees working in large American businesses. It found that 40 percent of these staff members were using their own devices for work purposes. Of those who use their devices at work, more than 37 percent do so without their employers consent.

The fact that these workers are completely disregarding the authority of their employers is bad enough, but the real problem here arises in the form of the security of your company's data. Information is the lifeblood of your business, and without it your employees simply cannot do their jobs. Workers are very often trusted with sensitive data that could very easily become a problem if it were to fall into the wrong hands. 

This isn't much a problem if said information is kept on company-owned devices. Your business has most likely spent a lot of money making sure this hardware is safe from hackers, and as such, passing data back and forth on these machines is relatively safe. However, when employees begin to utilize their own devices without telling you, they're opening up your company to a massive data breach. 

People generally don't follow online safety best practices, and this can often end with hackers gaining access to the information on their devices. If this were to happen to an employee that uses his own hardware at work without your consent, your company's data instantly becomes up for grabs. This is an incredibly expensive mistake to make, with IBM finding that the average cost of a data breach is around $3.8 million. 

Memeo C1 can help

While it would be impossible for you to ban personal devices at work – entirely too many people have cellphones for this to be a viable option – there is something you can do to keep your company's information safe. Memeo C1 allows key administrators in your organization the unique opportunity of being able to see which devices are accessing your company's data. 

This is great for an office environment because it lets you instantly recognize when people are using devices that they probably shouldn't be. What's more, if you ever do decide to implement a BYOD policy and one of these gadgets are lost or stolen, Memeo C1's remote wipe function allows you to completely remove company information from the device in question. Take control of your private information and try Memeo C1 today!