The Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) craze and its rising security concerns has been the topic of every major security conference. The need for secure mobile computing has pressed many organizations to adjust policies and controls in order to keep pace with the devices that enter the network through the door. In the quest to accommodate BYOD, the Mobile Device Management market was created.
BYOD has sparked many concerns: data loss, malware, application management. It’s been purported by some leading experts that the best approach is to secure the data rather than the devices.
What naturally follows BYOD is BYOA.
So what exactly is BYOA? Bring Your Own Apps is a part of the new trend in IT consumerization toward allowing employees to use third party applications or cloud based services for productivity in the workplace (http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/bring-your-own-apps-BYOA). There are several cited benefits to BYOA. Mobile devices are ubiquitous and encourage productivity, connectivity, and mobility.
Recent research from AlgoSec’s “State of Network Security 2013”, suggests that, according to survey data, two-thirds of the respondents expressed concerns about BYOD.
So how can your organization tackle BYOA? Some CIOs suggest developing a corporate App Store. Gartner has already predicted that by 2017, 25% of enterprises will have an enterprise App Store
(http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2334015). Until that day arrives one approach that information security professionals should take is “assume you are breached” and offensively secure the workplace. At the end of the day the goal should be to defend the network from the inside out (this is debatable) without hindering significantly the pace of business operations.
by Renelle Francis