With the days of the office cubicle fading into oblivion, businesses are now reaching out to talent all over the world, and more employees are demanding greater job flexibility. The mobile workforce is skyrocketing as people work from home or on the move instead of at the office. In fact, some studies claim that the mobile workforce will account for 72% of the entire US workforce by 2020!
Fully immersing your business into the remote working culture brings many benefits to both your company and your employees, but that doesn’t mean it will be easy to change the entire way your organization operates. Implementing a successful policy means placing security at the forefront of your strategy and ensuring that your employees are fully onboard. Here are some key considerations to get started with:
Managing Access Rights
Now that most corporate desktop applications have shifted over the cloud, there’s no longer any need for your employees to be limited by the constraints of your in-house network or data center. However, with the increased accessibility of the cloud comes the much greater responsibility to manage access rights and maintain a clear line of sight into where your data is traveling and who has access to it.
Access management is the single most important remote work policy of all. To keep your apps and data safe, you’ll need to enforce multi-factor authentication requiring new users and devices to provide additional verification when logging in for the first time. You’ll also need to implement remote monitoring, auditing, and reporting so you always know who’s accessing your resources and from where.
Mobile Device Management
With smartphones, tablets and laptops playing increasingly central roles in modern workplaces, IT leaders are finding themselves under greater pressure to protect these often-vulnerable devices.
Mobile device management is a critical component of any remote working strategy. It refers to the centralized administration of portable devices to enforce security rules and ensure that confidential data never gets exposed.
Common policies to include in any MDM policy include mandatory device encryption, banning of jailbroken devices, blacklisting of potentially vulnerable apps, and remote wiping when devices get stolen or lost. It’s also paramount to the security of your corporate data to have complete visibility into your entire portfolio of devices, whether they’re company- or employee-owned
Employee-Owned Devices
When it comes to managing bring your own device (BYOD) policies, you’ll need to consider a few other important variables, like employee privacy. At the same time, BYOD does present many benefits, such as increased productivity and lower costs. However, to ensure your data stays in the right hands, you’ll need to define a clear onboarding and exit strategy and keep your business apps and data separate from personal employee-owned assets.
One of the most effective ways to implement a BYOD policy that doesn’t get in the way of private ownership of said devices is to compartmentalize work-related data by deploying a ‘virtual partition’ which you can remotely manage and wipe as necessary. In addition, you can also enforce security policies that require users to connect via your corporate VPN whenever they access your cloud-based resources.
Another essential element of any BYOD policy is a clearly defined exit strategy that allows businesses to retain control over accessibility and confidential data whenever an employee abruptly leaves the company. While not many people are likely to enroll in the first place if they need to surrender control over their own devices, keeping any work-related data on a separate partition should allow you to make sure that it stays with the company.
If you’re ready to take your business into the future, you’ll need to implement a cloud infrastructure that gives you space to grow exponentially. That’s why SpectrumWise offers the technology solutions organizations need to mobilize without having to compromise on security. Call us today to discuss the many possibilities!
