Tips To Integrate BYOD Into Your Company

Whether you’re running a startup or managing a large building, it’s important to cut costs. One of the best ways to cut costs is to integrate a BYOD policy. By allowing employees to bring their own device to work, you’re cutting costs in multiple areas.

It’s not as easy as it sounds, though. There are multiple ways that implementing a Bring Your Own Device policy could fail, so here are a few tips on integrating BYOD into your company.

Create a Company Policy

It’s extremely important that the first thing you do when implementing BYOD solutions is to also implement a company policy regarding personal device usage. This policy should be used to cover everything from data that the employee can access from the company Wi-Fi network and regular cellular coverage to what would happen in the event that the phone is lost, which would be a remote wipe, causing the employee to lose all data.

Create a contract informing them of the risks associated with a Bring Your Own Device policy, what devices are permitted, and have the employee sign off on this policy. In the event that something happens, you’ll have the agreement showing that they were aware of the dangers of this policy and what could potentially happen.

Meet with your legal staff and go over the policy and agreement before presenting it to employees. They should look over every single detail and suggest any changes that may be necessary. Welcome their feedback and make changes accordingly.

Slowly Roll Out the Program

Once you’re ready to roll out the policy, announce it to your employees. Tell them that the program will slowly roll out over the next few weeks, depending on how well it turns out.

The last thing that you want to do is allow everyone in the program at once, have a bug crop up, have no idea how to replicate it, and expose your data to multiple people. Allow a handful of people to take advantage of the policy, see how things go regarding data security, and from there, decide how many people you want to roll it out to next.

Set Strict Guidelines for Data and Apps

Apps can completely kill productivity, so it’s best that you set some rules regarding them. First and foremost, you need to forbid the sharing of any location data, as well as access to their contact book. Any apps asking for those things should be strictly forbidden.

For the sake of productivity, games of any sort should be forbidden as well. What they should be able to use, though, are e-mail apps, as well as social media apps. In addition to those, they should be able to also access VPN and remote-access software so they can access data while away from the office. Be sure to monitor their devices (and your MDM software) so you know they’re adhering to the rules.

Set the Guidelines for Employee Termination

This can be a tricky situation, especially if they have a lot of personal data on their phone. When an employee exits the company, it’s necessary to remove all access and company data from their phone. How would you go about doing that? Well, there are two ways.

The first way is simple, but isn’t completely effective. During the exit interview, you could choose to unsync the device from email lists or access points. Again, this will remove access, but it’s not very effective at removing any locally stored data. If you don’t think the employee will have any remaining data that you feel is important, then this is a completely acceptable solution, and the one that the employee will prefer.

The other solution is the most effective, but also the most damaging. It may be necessary, once the employee is terminated, to wipe the entire device remotely. This is extremely effective as it removes all the settings and data, so you won’t have to worry about anything leaking

out, but it’ll also remove everything else from their phone, including web data, messages, and pictures.

If you have advance notice that the employee will be terminated, obviously, you can just tell the employee to create a backup of the images and other items they want to save. However, if there’s an intense situation and the employee is terminated abruptly, deleting everything from their phone could further ignite the situation.

Integrating a Bring Your Own Device policy is beneficial to both the company and the employee, but there are many precautions that must be taken. Have you implemented a BYOD policy or worked for a company that had a BYOD policy? How did it work out, and what happened to your device when you left?

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Author : Emily Green

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