How to Use ITAD as A BYOD Strategy for Protecting Your Corporate Data

What is BYOD?

The BYOD concept is fast catching among present-day corporate companies due to its enormous benefits. The employees bring their devices to work and can access the Company’s IT System from anywhere at any time.

This has given enormous advantages to the company, its employees, and the customers. Many companies have reported that their productivity has increased often, and their customers are happy with the swift and fast response to their customer service queries.

The employees find it easier to deal with their company’s infrastructure through their own devices as they can stay connected to their company at all times and can avoid the hassle of maintaining and operating another device exclusively for dealing with their company matters.

But despite all the benefits offered by the BYOD concept, the companies are also exposed to increased risk. They have to face more hazards in dealing with sensitive corporate data that resides in the employees’ device.

As these devices are fully owned and operated by the employees without much control from the company management, it is impossible to exercise complete control over how these devices are managed and disposed of using the ITAD processes.

When a device having sensitive data is disposed of improperly, the data contained in these devices reach the hands of unauthorized persons leading to serious data-related hazards and issues that may have severe implications for the company.

Due to this, these companies that are encouraging the BYOD as a viable way of increasing the efficiency of the day to day running of their business now is the time for them to realize the real dangers of this way of operation and find the ways to prevent the corporate data from reaching the hands of unauthorized persons by putting in place the right ITAD plans into action.

Corporate companies cannot afford to lose their business data to achieve more data mobility and convenience in operation; they need to have the right strategies to streamline the use of the employee’s own devices. This is very much necessary to prevent data loss and related issues arising out of the loss or theft of these devices.

So, have the following strategies ready to do their work before falling victim to unprepared mobility, leading to severe damage to your business reputation and goodwill due to loss of corporate data through the BYOD concept’s uncontrolled use.

So, it is always prudent to give effect to the following strategies and fail-proof ITAD plans in place and make them your part of your daily work schedule so that you can unleash the power of the BYOD as a way of enhancing the comfort and efficiency of your employees:

Provide For The Situation Arising Out Of Lost, Stolen Improperly Disposed of Employee-Owned Devices

Yeah, until recently, that is

Mobile devices have become the natural companion of the present-day business executive, and it is quite natural for him to be always with his phone and be able to remain connected to his office at all times. Due to their availability at all places and their increased price range, and the chance of accessing valuable data, mobile devices have become very hot targets for thieves.

For instance, in big cities like New York, we find that more than 40% of the robberies involve the stealing of smartphones. As today’s smartphones have become ultra-portable, considerably priced, and can store vast amounts of data, they are the number one choice of pickpockets all over the world.

Apart from robbery and pickpocketing, losing of the mobile devices is also increasing every day as they are taken everywhere and hence losing them often is a real possibility that will happen one time or another. It is only a matter of time before one of the employees will find their mobile devices lost. At times the employees resort to improper disposal of their mobile devices without doing it through the Company’s ITAD process.

When the devices are stolen, improperly disposed of, or lost by the employee, it goes with all its contents and data intact without the knowledge of knowing to whom they are going to reach and how the data and other sensitive materials in them are going to be used.

This is going to pose a lot of problems for the company. Hence, the company must have an active and tested action-plan ready to be launched as soon as an employee finds and report his mobile device as stolen or lost or have exchanged it for a new device or sold it in the market away from the established ITAD route of the company.

Always Insist On Taking Regular Backups Of Data In The Mobile Devices

No doubt about it

Taking regular backing up of the data from the employees’ mobile devices will help your company have sensitive data in your backup system. This will help you minimize the damage and loss caused to the company and its operation when the mobile device of an employee is stolen, disposed of, or lost.

Though the company has to struggle with the risk of misuse of corporate data, it can escape from the staggering problem of lack of data and get the operations going as usual even if a key employee part away with his mobile device’s possession.

So, put in place an effective workday routine to have the data backed up at regular intervals, create and maintain a foolproof data backup system, and monitor this system regularly.

Put In Place A Comprehensive BYOD Policy To Meet Severe Contingencies

No pressure there!

Though the use of the employee’s own devices for business operations are in vogue since the days of the emergence of smartphones, most of the companies have not understood the perils they are exposed due to the improper disposal, loss, or stealing of mobile devices of an employee operating on BYOD system.

Now is the time to wake up to the realities, and the Companies must have enough controls on the mobile devices that are used on a BYOD basis and must have real foolproof policies regarding

• The type of encryption that must be enabled in the mobile device of the employee
• The minimum-security controls that are necessary while using these devices
• Terms for accepting and certifying a device for company work
• The type of control the company can exercise in case the employee leaves the company
• The extent of control the company can have on the mobile devices when they are lost or stolen
• What type of arrangement can the company put in place to remotely erase all the data in the device when the mobile device is stolen or lost by the employee?
• How and when the company is going to define and enforce acceptable use of the device

Enforce The Usage Policies Strictly

You can say that again.

It is not enough to draft and announce the fair usage policies for the use of employee-owned mobile devices for work; they must be strictly enforced for increased compliance and to avoid data-related problems to the company. For this, allocate the required resources and implement the right mobile device management (MDM) software systems to have a uniform and effective enforcement of the mobile device usage policies.

Keep Open The IT Support At All Times

At this point, you realize

The employees actively support present-day BYOD programs due to the fact of bringing down the help desk IT support requests. To avoid the problem arising from the employee-owned mobile devices, it is necessary to keep the lines of communication open at all times. Your customer support system must also be made more pro-active in operation.

Extend the limit of your BYOD policy beyond the mobile devices

In the present times, the data is more used in the cloud-based systems as well as through the mobile devices owned by the employees. The cloud facilities like dropbox or Google Drive are also actively used for handling and storing company data and devices and enforce your BYOD mobile device policy so that it applies to these cloud-based platforms.

Set Up An Educational Program For The Employees

What makes this so special?

Most of the time, the employees are unaware of the consequences of the data loss caused by the improper disposal of the devices owned by them. In these circumstances, it is necessary to teach them the policies in the use of their devices for company purposes and how they will be enforced for the protection of the business data.

For this

• Create and run an effective program for educating the employees on the fair and careful use of the data contained in their devices
• How they can safely and securely store, use and manipulate the company data
• How the company proposes to access and control the data stored in the employee-owned devices

Thus, you can use the above strategies to create, put in place and enforce the right policies for the fair, careful and proper use of employee-owned mobile devices for dealing with the company’s data.

This is a very vitally important aspect of data security. It is necessary for the company to be vigilant and have everything in place and operate them at full efficiency.

The company must ensure that all the employees follow the ITAD policy that is being implemented in the company. They should never attempt to dispose of the data-laden devices improperly.

Relevant Resources:

How to Plan For IT Assets Disposal When You’re ITAD Company Shuts Down

How ITAD Services Can Help Your Company