Bring your own device, or BYOD, has risen in popularity in part because in the United States, there are 230 million people using mobile devices, and 65 million of those devices are smartphones. With the growing use of smartphones, especially during work hours, companies are tapping into the availability of this technology to harness it for work use. When employees bring their own devices, they can save a company in costs, and also increase productivity.

With employees running around and using their own mobile devices to do work, there has rightfully also been a surge in the need for mobile device management. What many employers do not realize is that one of the most important reasons to manage mobile devices is to ensure security. The BYOD model is heavily reliant upon the cloud, which means that business gets done not on an internal network, but on the wide open internet.

A 2013 HR policy survey from BLR showed that bring your own device was the second most problematic issue that employers faced. Malware, privacy laws, and the dangerous cocktail that comes from mixing corporate and personal data all need to be accounted for. Did you know that approximately 65% of employees do not bother to verify the security of the sites that they are using?

One piece of the puzzle for ensuring security is using mobile device management with encryption. AES, the Advanced Encryption Standard algorithm, was first published in 1998, was first used by the government in 2001, and is a unique system for scrambling data. It is commonly believed that AES is an unbreakable code. In order to truly ensure that employees comply with BYOD policies, and meet requirements for company security, a combination of encryption and authentication should be used.

If most of your employees use an iPhone, then your mobile device management will have to account for iphone management and security as well. Many people consider iPhone security to be more advanced than other smartphone security systems. However, there are still security risks that you need to be aware of, such as if employees are not locking their devices, or are not using email securely. Make sure that security is a priority in any mobile device management, and you will find that Byod is less risky, and more rewarding.