Security, Privacy, and Mobile Devices: What Your Employees Need to Know

Mobile devices are everywhere these days – including the hands of your employees. Let's explore some aspects of these handy devices that you need to make your employees aware of, courtesy of your Austin IT managed services experts at Gravity Systems:

First of all, your employees need to understand that mobile devices are easily lost – and when they are, they often fall into the wrong hands. The obvious answer to this concern is to make sure each employee's device requires a strong, complex password to gain access to data. But even this measure can be child's play for an experienced hacker, so your employees will need to tolerate the additional inconvenience of two-factor authentication. Nobody enjoys having to go through this extra step, but if your employee has lost his phone, he'll be glad you insisted on it – and so will you.

A mobile device can be just as vulnerable to hacking even while it's securely on the employee's person. Careless practices such as performing sensitive transactions over a public Wifi connection can expose the communication to “man-in-the-middle” attacks that can re-direct the data being sent. We can advise you on options such as VPN (Virtual Private Network) programs that you can make available to you employees so they can transmit data more securely.

Last but not least, there's issue of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policies. Employees love the convenience of using their own personal devices for both work and play, but they need to make use of the encryption and security features on those devices and make those devices available for features such as selective wiping of corporate data if the device is compromised. Gravity Systems can help you and your team make optimal, safe use of those mobile devices, so contact us to learn more!