Logo Rob Buckley – Freelance Journalist and Editor

How to cope with BYOD

How to cope with BYOD

The cloud, mobile device management and virtualisation are riding to the rescue of organisations faced with the inevitability of 'bring your own device'. By Rob Buckley

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For many organisations, bring your own device (BYOD) is a decision they don't have to make for themselves: employees are already doing just that. Instead, CIOs and CSOs have to choose either to put a ban on a practice already in motion, or embrace it. But although there are clear security issues to consider, these can be eliminated, or at least reduced to an acceptable level, with the right technologies in place.

Providing mobile access to corporate resources is something that requires supervision and, mainly, two different technologies, preferably integrated with one another: authentication and network access control (NAC). Authentication allows employees to prove they have permission to access the network and its resources, while NAC determines which devices can be used to do this.

A big advantage of mobile devices is that they can become an authentication mechanism in themselves, either through text messages containing one-time passwords or through applications that act as secure tokens. However, second-factor authentication systems, such as fingerprint and card readers, may not work, and not merely because there's no USB port for them to plug into.

"The first pillar of discussion has to be how you secure the network, who has access to what, etc. NAC technologies are key," says Juniper Networks senior director of solutions marketing EMEA Paul Gainham. For compliance, he says, NAC systems can also maintain an audit trail that can be integrated with GRC or log management systems. Ian Foddering, CTO at Cisco UK and Ireland, adds that smarter solutions can also keep track of where people are accessing resources from. If someone accesses from a mobile device internally one minute, and then apparently tries to access data from another mobile device in another country a few minutes later, that access can be shut down.

NAC systems can also maintain a unified access policy whereby every device connects in the same way, requiring no additional training for the end-user.

The sticking point for most organisations, however, is corporate data. If a device containing sensitive information is lost, that's an obvious security issue that could cost the organisation considerably, either through direct financial loss or damage to reputation.

While most devices have encryption capabilities, older ones might not, and there is no guarantee that the employee will have chosen a strong passcode to lock their device, or that there is a short enough 'time-out' to make it worthwhile.

There are three solutions to this and other BYOD problems: the cloud, mobile device management (MDM) and virtualisation.

The cloud and MDM
Garry Sidaway, director of global security strategy at Integralis, says: "The cloud is compelling organisations to look at the way they devise solutions. Anything with a network cable is going to be a legacy device next year - everything is going to this mobile environment. Security now needs to be embedded in the application, and the cloud means you won't need VPN access or anything else."

With data, access and applications all in the cloud, the risk of data loss is significantly reduced and possibly even eliminated, Sidaway adds.

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