policy

By Jonathan Furman

A new trend among businesses is the BYOD policy. BYOD is short for “Bring Your Own Device” and there are several reasons why it’s becoming a trend these days. To put it simply, the concept offers a ton of benefits for employees and businesses.

To begin with, employers don’t have to invest in separate devices for their employees. Employees, on the other hand, have the freedom to work on their own devices, which allows for greater flexibility. However, implementing a BYOD policy isn’t something to be taken lightly. There are several considerations to be made. Here are a few important ones.

Enforcing rules

One of the biggest problems with a BYOD policy is the limited amount of control employers can have over the devices. After all, these are devices owned by the employees and there is the legal matter of right to privacy. In fact, IT departments often have a problem enforcing rules and regulations when it comes to BYOD policies.

Other than that, there is also the issue of dealing with multiple varieties of devices and operating systems that come with their own security mechanisms.

So, before you implement a BYOD policy, make sure your IT department or IT services provider is capable enough to handle the activities that arise from such a policy.

Security

Security is another concern that comes with BYOD policies. Since the devices are owned by your employees, you can expect issues such as consumer apps being connected to your network. This can prove to be a major security risk.

However, there are a few solutions. Apart from implementing robust security solutions, your business can also develop its own app to exercise a certain amount of control over the data that passes to and from these devices. There are private enterprise app stores that can help you with managing internal apps.

However, you need to make sure that your business has a big enough budget to accommodate this solution.

Compliance

When you do finally implement the BYOD policy, make sure every aspect of security and data protection is covered. Make sure you clearly define what is allowed on these devices and what isn’t. Do not hesitate to implement rules that are directly related to the protection of your company data.

Before you set up the policy, make sure your employees are informed and that a consensus is arrived at regarding what constitutes acceptable usage within company limits. Implementing a policy without employee consultation is a bad move. You’re either going to lose control or end up being overly restrictive, which goes against the whole concept of BYOD.

Make sure you have discussions with your human resources and legal teams. Talk to them and find out what the legal concerns would your business be looking at with such a policy. If there are variations in the laws, try implementing sub-policies that expand upon the primary policy.

Make sure all necessary stakeholders are involved in the drafting of the policy so that it is effective and ready for implementation.

Jonathan Furman is the founder and CEO of management consulting firm A.K.A. Furman Transformation, igniting his full passion in transforming all aspects of a company’s Sales, Marketing, and Operational Growth strategies, into the most powerful and polished version of themselves. http://www.furmantransformation.com.