Managed IT Services in San Antonio: BYOD Security

For most businesses today, BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) is a reality that presents various benefits and security challenges that require the expertise of managed IT services providers in San Antonio. Using a BYOD policy in your organization implies that the security of your data is most vulnerable at the end-user access point. Thus, it is critical to deploy device management measures targeting BYOD.

While you may have in-house software management measures to protect data breaches that could arise from the use of BYOD, they can’t prevent the physical theft of such devices. BYOD lack the sophistication of corporate devices that come with legacy hardware, and malicious actors can easily use such devices to steal sensitive data and corrupt your internal networks.

Securing BYOD

Managed IT services providers in San Antonio offer advanced BYOD security solutions to help secure your IT assets and prevent data breaches.

• Network Access Control – Your BOYD program grants network access to your employees’ personal devices, which hackers can exploit through a public WIFI. Deploying validation rules and limitations for network access makes it impossible for a hacker to compromise your IT systems if they penetrate your networks.
• Mobile Device Management – Unlike corporate devices, BYOD lacks legacy hardware that is designed to keep enterprise content stored in a centralized manner. With permission to access data from their personal devices, employees can store enterprise content in less secure mediums, such as external hard drives and smartphones. Implementing MDM enables you to track employees and control their network access and audit their use of enterprise content.
• Enterprise Mobility Management – Your BOYD environment needs user provisioning by use of ID systems to enforce security policies. Adopting EMM enables you to strictly manage the access of your IT systems so that users who are no longer authorized to access certain content are terminated right away. It also makes it easy for you to wipe out data from lost devices.

BOYD Best Practices

For NAC, MDM, and EMM to work for you, it is critical that the base level security of your IT infrastructure is up-to-date with industry standards. Deploying the latest network security solutions is a proactive strategy in thwarting network attacks across all of your networks. Unlike an ad hoc network security approach, it protects your networks from attacks in both remote network access instances and onsite.

With the help of a managed service provider (MSP), you can reduce security risks by enforcing the use of approved hardware platforms for your IT environment. Also, pooling a set of authorized applications for enterprise use is an effective means to reduce security risks from the use of BYOD. The overall security of your IT systems depends on limiting network access to secured instances and authorized persons. Blocking unknown networks from accessing your internal systems and limiting the access to sensitive data to on-premises devices guarantees that your BYOD policy serves you right.

More steps to reinforce your BYOD security:

• Employ VPN-based network log-in administration
• Deploy “Find My Device” and remote wipe services
• Containerization of enterprise content

At ICS, we offer reliable managed IT services in San Antonio devised to help your business overcome IT security challenges. Contact us now to secure your BYOD environment and to learn more about our IT services.

Jason Simons

ICS is a Texas-based 40-year-old technology company specializing in Managed IT, VoIP, Video Conferencing and Video Surveillance solutions for US and International businesses. ICS has over 4000 regional installations and specializes in multi-site businesses between 25 and 2500 employees. ICS’s customers enjoy the experience of ICS’s Total Care program which provides clients flat fee services with obsolescence and growth protection. Whether a customer elects to deploy their IT, Video Conferencing or VoIP in the cloud or on the customer’s premise, ICS can provide a full turn-key solution for our clients under one flat monthly fee.