How to Secure Mobile Devices in the Workplace

Workers used to leave work at the office, or at least, they’d be limited to what they could fit in their briefcases. Now your employees, with the help of the cloud, can squeeze their entire job into their tiny smartphones.

They take their work—and your organization’s security—home in their pockets and backpacks. Their devices take the trains with employees, go on vacations, and more, where they may be exposed to any number of malware and network attacks along the way.

Nearly 99 percent of employees say at least part of their workforce uses mobile devices to perform their job duties, according to an ISMG study. That opens the door to a lot of potential security breaches. As a recent IT Pro Portal article points out, human error threatens corporate security as much as hackers or technology issues.

What You Can’t Do to Secure Mobile Devices

You can’t stop the freight train that is mobile and personal device use. If you try to block access, you’ll only find yourself circumvented while your efforts end up strewn across the tracks.

You also can’t do nothing because cyber attackers aren’t going anywhere. A survey by Check Point reveals 94 percent of security experts believe the frequency of mobile attacks will increase sharply over the next year.

Employees want to use their own devices for work, but it also benefits companies when employees find it easy to work remotely. Ultimately, it makes more sense to embrace mobility and take steps to secure your company’s data than to resist the ways your employees can make the most of mobile technology.

What You Can Do to Secure Mobile Devices

There is a lot you can do to secure mobile devices in the workplace, and wherever else they go, regardless of the size of your organization.

Here are some basic tips:  

• Keep up with hackers. Stay up to date on what the current trends and threats are. Read up on what other organizations are doing to secure their data and networks.
  
  
• Pay attention. It’s tempting to bury your head in the sand and hope for the best, but it’s far better to be attentive and proactive. Ask employees about how they are using their devices and analyze the risks they take.
  
  
• Invest in security. Dedicate resources and educate employees on topics like prevention and best practices, phishing techniques, and reasons for keeping personal and work data separate.
  
  
• Split your networks. Network segmentation contains threats to a single network and limits access to various parties.

Security concerns have become a part of life. To avoid a potentially catastrophic breach, it is best to make prevention part of your normal work processes and take advantage of the benefits of a flexible and mobile workforce.

Download this white paper, “5 Ways to Win,” to learn more about the security considerations of mobile devices in the workplace. The white paper also addresses other considerations when using mobile devices and collaboration systems to engage employees and simplify group work.