Leveraging BYOD for Success

This is the first in a series of posts about our communications and infrastructure technologies.

In addition to all of the cabling, cabinets, racks, and network products, we also can design, install, and maintain the right solutions for your business. In this short case study video, our security experts break down the benefits and risks of the rapidly growing bring your own device (BYOD) trend in the workplace. They discuss how Black Box offers Cisco software that enables each device to act as a secure corporate device, but also provides the user with mobility.

BT releases survey on BYOD risks

BT (British Telecom) recently issued a report, “Rethink the Risk,” which contains the results of a survey of more than 2,000 IT decision-makers around the world. According to the research, the three biggest risks are cyber security threats, accidental or intentional employee data loss, and the increased use of personal devices on employers’ networks.

BYOD presents IT managers with a new set of security issues. Four out of ten IT managers say they have experienced security breaches from employees bringing in unauthorized devices. The research shows that 82% of companies already allow BYOD or will allow it within the next 24 months. Interestingly, BYOD usage is especially high in China (92%) and India (80%). Of those companies with a BYOD policy, security was by far the biggest challenge (74%).

Survey respondents rated the following threat areas as challenging or very challenging:
Cybersecurity: 68%
Preventing data leaked by employees: 68%
Increasing use of personally owned devices and social media sites: 61%
Preventing or fixing weaknesses with our business systems: 57%
Security in supply chain systems: 57%
Industrial or state-sponsored espionage: 53%

For more information on how you can adapt your wireless infrastructure for the BYOD trend, read our latest brochure on The Changing Wi-Fi Landscape.

The 3 biggest mistakes made in wireless deployment

Planning to deploy a wireless network? Avoid these three mistakes!

1. Planning for coverage rather than capacity.
A wireless network may have sufficient coverage in the sense that the signal reaches the intended area. However, if there are too many users, the network will become overwhelmed and slow.

LESSON: Count square footage and users.

2. Ignoring differences in power requirements.
Some wireless devices, particularly smartphones and tablet computers, require a higher signal strength to connect. Planning a wireless network with only laptop computers in mind may leave some users hanging.

LESSON: Not all wireless devices are equal.

3. Not distinguishing between user and device
Because mobile devices are subject to malware, good security policy is to grant separate levels of authorization based on both user and device. For instance, a person on a company-owned laptop may be granted a higher level of access than the same person on a personal smartphone.

LESSON: You may trust the person, but do you trust their phone?

Additional resources:
FREE Wireless Assessment
Brochure: How to adapt your wireless infrastructure for the BYOD trend
White Paper: Why Intelligent Mesh Is the Best Enterprise Solution

Five questions to ask before opening your network to BYOD

There’s a lot of excitement nowadays about the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend, in which employees use their own smartphones, tablets, or laptop computers to access the corporate network via wireless. But before you set up those wireless access points, there are a number of questions to consider.

Who’s allowed into the network?
The first step to managing BYOD is to decide who gets on your network. Do you have an open BYOD policy that lets any device connect to your network through wireless? Do you let anyone in, but make him or her register? Do you authenticate users via password? Do you allow only known devices onto the network? Do you support all devices and operating systems?

How much access are BYOD devices allowed?
Do you allow employees’ personal devices full network access or restrict them to Internet access only? If you allow full network access, is there a security policy in place to prevent company confidential information from being loaded into devices that may be lost or stolen?

How safe are BYOD devices and what are you going to do about them?
There’s more malware out there all the time, and it’s affecting more devices than ever. This is a problem not limited to laptop computers—the popular Android™ operating system for phones has a large amount of known malware. How will you screen connecting devices to make sure they have updated patches and don’t contain malware?

Do you know who’s on your network?

In this day of BYOD—bring your own device—it’s challenging to know what kind of devices want access to your local area network (LAN) and how to protect your corporate network from non-corporate assets who should still should be able to access the Internet.

Your organization has a firewall to stop hackers, viruses, and malware at the network’s edge. A firewall is vital to safe network operation, but because it operates at the edge of your network, it can only protect you from threats coming from outside your network.

NAC devices, on the other hand, protect your network from threats originating on the inside. Unauthorized devices connected to your network make your organization vulnerable to malware, viruses, and even internal spying and data theft. This is what a NAC device is designed to prevent, whether the vulnerability is a LAN port in a lobby or conference room, or a wireless access point.

In this age of BYOD to work, it’s even more difficult for your network to know what devices should be blocked. Most of the time, BYOD users are employees, guests, or contractors who need access to certain network areas, but as non-corporate assets, they should be steered away from others. A NAC that works with your network infrastructure can easily address that concern.