With more people using their personal devices for work purposes, properly implementing a BYOD policy with the right tools is more important than ever.
Using private devices for work purposes has given employees more flexibility, increasing convenience and productivity, but there are several security risks associated with this trend. It’s now crucial for businesses to have a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy to ensure employees can use the devices of their choosing without endangering the whole business. Read this guide to get a better understanding of the importance of this policy and learn about some of the best tools that can be of help.
What is a BYOD policy?
It is simply a set of criteria that governs how much control a business has over devices belonging to employees when employees use them for work purposes. Most often it concerns employee-owned smartphones, tablets, and PCs, but can of course span across any device type.
BYOD policies are typically company-specific, so they’ll likely include different rules and criteria. Some companies will choose not to provide company-owned laptops and PCs. Instead, they will give their staff a stipend for purchasing and maintaining devices of their choosing. It’s more common, however, for businesses to support personal devices—to an extent defined by their policy—alongside company-owned equipment. The policy’s rules usually vary according to a user’s role in the company, the device they use, application requirements, and many other factors that may have an impact on security.
Top tools to help you implement a BYOD policy
BYOD is a wide topic that covers various aspects, such as remote monitoring and management, remote access, managed antivirus, document backup, email protection or password management. All these components can be handled by dedicated tools to ensure a safe and productive BYOD environment.
Here are some of the best tools that can help you implement an effective policy as well as improve security in a multi-device, distributed work environment.
1. N-able RMM
To ensure your policy is effective at keeping systems secure, it should be supported by multiple layers of security and in-depth visibility into your systems. N-able™ RMM is all-in-one RMM software that provides several advanced remote monitoring security layers, offering endpoint detection and response, patch management, backup, and recovery capabilities. This RMM software also includes mobile device management features, allowing you to track and wipe smartphones remotely when necessary. Give it a try by accessing a 30-day free trial of RMM.
Note: For remote monitoring needs, you can also consider a second N-able product in the form 0f N-central. Read our guide on RMM vs. N-central to better understand which one is a good fit in your case.
2. N-able Mail Assure
When employees are working from their personal devices, it’s easy for them to fall into a false sense of security—particularly with regards to email protection. Email-borne threats are increasing year over year, and can compromise your organization’s security if your employees aren’t vigilant against them. N-able Mail Assure helps you protect against both known and emerging email threats via the intelligent protection and filtering engine, which uses data from over 23 million mailboxes to filter emails with 99.999% filtering accuracy.
You can integrate Mail Assure with Microsoft 365 to bring enhanced security features to the email services provider your customers may already use. The software can offer email continuity by enabling 24/7 access to email via a web-based console, even in the event of a Microsoft 365 outage. By helping protect email through software like Mail Assure and enforcing related requirements with your policy, you can better safeguard your company against email compromise. You can access a free 30-day trial here.
3. Jump Cloud
Jump Cloud can help you increase the security of personal devices. The solution lets you manage Windows, Linux, and macOS from anywhere, more easily enabling remote work for your customers. You can use it to help secure any smartphone or laptop, and it features easy-to-manage system security policies. By enabling simple management, including personal devices, Jump Cloud can help you implement safer BYOD practices.
4. Malwarebytes
Malwarebytes specifically works to provide mobile protection for Android and iOS devices, which can help companies mitigate the security risks associated with using employee-owned smartphones. The Malwarebytes applications provide proactive protection against ransomware, malware, and other threats. Malwarebytes also provides cybersecurity solutions for Windows, Mac, and Chromebook, all of which your employees might want to utilize under your personal device policy.
5. Evolve IP
Evolve IP supports the implementation of a robust policy around personal device usage by facilitating unified communications—without compromising security. This cloud-based unified communications tool allows your team to collaborate with video, chat, conferencing, and voice. It can integrate with applications already in use, making deployment and user adoption easier. With the use of this tool, you can better implement BYOD policies that allow collaboration across work and personal computers while minimizing the security concerns of using employee-owned devices for such communications.
6. OneDrive
OneDrive is a cloud storage solution that allows your employees to access, share, and collaborate on all your business documents from anywhere. This tool is especially useful for companies with employees using multiple devices, because it ensures the syncing of files across all connected computers, phones, and tablets. With OneDrive, employees can use their personal and company-owned devices interchangeably and securely, without losing access to their files. You can also use OneDrive with N-able Backup to help protect any of these business-critical documents from deletion or damage.
Creating a BYOD policy that works for you
Although the rising trend for using personal devices can introduce security risks, it’s difficult to entirely eradicate in today’s working environments—particularly if businesses hope to remain competitive and attract top talent. Work From Home (WFH) policies only make it more important to ensure a top-notch security for all devices used for work purposes.
To support your customers’ needs and ensure security, you should implement robust BYOD policies to keep data safe at every step of the way. You can use the above tools in tandem or on their own to help you achieve this.