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Insights on money, career and trading

How to Protect Your Network from Employee’s Personal Devices

Posted on October 4, 2016 by Daniel at 12:54 pm

For better or worse, we are now living in a world in which employees are going to expect to be able to connect to their company’s networks using personal devices. This can even be beneficial for employers since they won’t need to provide those devices themselves. However, having devices that are used for both business and pleasure connected to your network does open you up to some risks, including the possibility of malware being introduced or internal data being lost as a result of theft.

Those aren’t risks that you should have to run. Here are a few ways to make sure your employees can connect to your network without making that network vulnerable.

Setting Guidelines

Before you let your employees connect to the business network, make sure you establish some guidelines. Not many companies put policies in place, but you should make sure you define what kind of devices can be used and exactly who can connect to the network. For this, you might need to put together a comprehensive cybersecurity plan that includes all employees personal devices as well. Consider reaching out to a reputed cybersecurity consulting company that can send in professional teams to help out with a comprehensive security plan. Further guidelines include a list of the type of sites that should not be accessed; you might also want to consider setting a download limit or restricting your employees from downloading large files through your network.

Use a Virtual Private Network

Companies can also ensure that they are protected by providing only limited access to a server. You can have employees connect through a virtual private network (VPN) instead of directly through the server itself – check out this site for more information. It is also very likely that they will need to authenticate this through a username and password.

This will also let you make sure that the device they use has been pre-approved by your IT department, and you can use certificate checks to determine whether the correct operating system and anti-virus software is being used.

Exert Limited Control Over Data

The loss of a device that is owned directly by your company will be reported very quickly, and IT staff will be able to swiftly wipe it to make sure that no information is lost. However, a personal device is harder to control; people don’t like knowing someone can erase all their files at will.

However, you can buy products that mark all company data, giving you the option to wipe only that information if control over the device is ever compromised. Such products can also prevent a user transferring company data from one device to another without your approval.

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Insights on money, career and trading