Many businesses were presented with a no-win situation as smartphones and tablets exploded in popularity and employees began bringing them into the workplace. They could either ban personal devices and stick with providing workers with company-owned technology, which risked alienating employees. Or they could accept the personal devices into the office through bring you own device (BYOD) policies. While the latter seems like the better choice, BYOD is not without its challenges and difficulties, especially when it concerns security. Employees may enjoy BYOD since it gives them more freedom and allows them to be more productive, but many business leaders arent completely sold on the idea yet. As personal mobile devices make their way into work, companies have more security challenges on their hands, especially while those same devices become a portal for Big Data.
IT departments were already facing some formidable hurdles when BYOD was first introduced. IT workers were tasked with being able to support multiple different devices, each with different capabilities and features. At the same time, they had to ensure everything worked together smoothly and avoid hiccups in production and business operations. This all had to be done while still keeping company data secured and accomplishing their usual daily tasks with a limited staff. Needless to say, this was a tall order for many IT departments, and the rise of Big Data on mobile devices has only made their duties all the more complicated.
The constant evolution of technology has made preparing ahead of time for these revolutionary changes an increasingly difficult mission. Only recently have mobile devices begun to use Big Data applications, and smartphones and tablets are also being used for the purposes of data collection. These developments certainly dont make preparing for security challenges any easier. In fact, in one recent survey, only 22% of IT workers said they had developed a BYOD policy with data access via personal devices in mind. BYOD mobile devices are also using cloud services more than ever, and those services are also utilizing Big Data in newer and more innovative ways. In other words, Big Data is being used by employees from their smartphones, and businesses, especially small ones, are finding it hard to keep up.
Thats not to say that the task of improving BYOD security in a world of Big Data is an impossible one. Even though small businesses may feel ill equipped to handle these new security challenges, there are ways to make BYOD personal devices better protected. On the part of the business, when adopting a BYOD policy, clear rules and guidelines need to be set up that employees understand and agree to. This may require additional training and education, but its only through a clearly defined policy that businesses will be able to identify when an employee is behaving in a suspicious manner. Implementation is another aspect that organizations need to take into account, mainly by making their infrastructure more standardized, which enables easier management.
Luckily for companies with limited resources, others are also responding to the complications that arise with Big Data and BYOD in the workplace. While enterprises may rely more on cloud computing, cloud vendors are recognizing the improvements that have to be made in cloud security and responding accordingly. Device manufacturers are also trying to help out businesses by introducing new security settings devoted exclusively to business use. Some of these measures include adoption of mobile device management (MDM) features, which allow devices to integrate more easily into a security framework within a company.
While Big Data can potentially complicate matters of BYOD security, it can be harnessed to improve it as well. The task of monitoring multiple systems and potentially hundreds of devices leads to the generation and collection of large amounts of information. By using Big Data services, companies can better organize and analyze this data by improving detection and prevention systems. In the same way its used to detect fraud within the financial sector, Big Data can help identify suspicious behaviors and locate systems that have been infiltrated. Big Data also can troubleshoot outages, conduct security audits, and identify the mobile devices used the most to provide IT with more time to prepare.
Big Data and BYODs entrance into the workplace has lead to more complications for IT departments focused on improving security. While both items can be valuable tools, businesses need to know the risks involved and how best to protect company data. Only then can they discover and gain the most from the benefits of BYOD and Big Data.
