Security and BYOD ? Can Biometrics Keep Your Data Safe?
The unstoppable trend towards employees accessing data with their own smartphones and tablets, rather than using company-issued and vetted devices, is a recurring nightmare for you if you are responsible for the security of your company?s IP or customer data.
?The widespread adoption of?bring-your-own-device?(BYOD) has made mobile device security a major topic within the enterprise. The main conversation pertaining to the use of smartphones is the vast amounts of easy to access data with very little or no authentication needed.?
~ Grayson Milbourne, security intelligence director, Webroot, in a recent article on SC Magazine.
Reversing the BYOD trend is out of the question, so the next best solution is finding simple but effective ways to verify that the person using the device is the employee, and close down access if those ?know your employee? identifiers do not match.
?Know Your Employee? (KYE) is not a new concept. We find references online as far back as 2009 with just a quick online search. The need for KYE solutions, however, is now far more critical, because employees are creating new access points through your firewalls with every new hire (and, even worse, employees who have left!)
Great security features exist, of course, to ID each person. The problem is, if we don?t keep the process simple, employees will fail to work the system properly. This imperils your efforts to use KYE to boost security.
Biomarkers can work, using the smartphone camera and speaker. Single sign-on regimes can, too.
You might also consider a mix of them, giving lower KYE standards for less risky corporate resources, and scaling up the criteria as the data to be accessed gets more valuable.
If you need suggestions about what mix of security features to test when building out your BYOD IT protection plan, drop us a note and a specialist can step you through what is available.
