Tips for Successful BYOD & CYOD Implementations
Welcome back to our Enterprise Mobility and Mobile VoIP series where we have covered a range of topics including the Benefits of Telecommuting ranging through to which is best for your business BYOD or CYOD. As we mentioned in last week’s post, both Bring Your Own Device and Choose Your Own Device have their pros and cons, and the solution you implement will likely be determined by your need for data security.
However, regardless of whichever solution you choose, the question of how to successfully implement such strategies remains and the purpose of this article is to provide some tips generated from our experience of supporting customers with enterprise mobility.
BYOD & CYOD Tips & Tricks
Tip #1:
Choose your strategy by focusing on increasing user-friendliness and productivity from an end users point of view. In doing so, you will eliminate the products that do not fulfil your needs, whilst finding those that best fit your requirements. During this phase, it is essential to test your devices comprehensively from the end user perspective, regardless of the device.
The benefits of testing devices from the end user point of view are threefold. Firstly, you will quickly discover any shortcuts that users could take in the name of productivity, which could be detrimental to the success of your policies. Secondly, performing comprehensive testing will help you identify those devices that are best for your business as well as whether a BYOD or CYOD strategy is more suitable for your business. Finally, should you decide on deploying mobile VoIP as part of your BYOD / CYOD strategy, it is import to thoroughly test those as well.
Any vendor worth their salt understands the importance of comprehensive testing and therefore offer a free version of their software to enable you to do just this.
Tip #2:
Ensure that every member of the IT team who will be dealing with problems arising from mobile devices has a clear understanding of not only the issues they may well face when problem-solving but also the objectives of the companies telecommuting policy. If this requires additional training, provide it. Otherwise, the solutions they propose could also end up denting the success of your mobile working strategies.
Tip #3:
Stress the importance of data backups and device security. Regardless of whether you implement a BYOD or CYOD strategy, it is essential that your employees understand the importance of protecting company data and networks.
Therefore, an important step to take is to implement a Data Loss Prevention tool, but also deliver staff training on how to use it. Provide employees with best practice guidelines regarding regular backups as well as device security guidelines in order to avoid security threats such as weak passwords.
Tip #4:
Passwords: what’s good and what’s not?
Additional steps which can be taken to bolster security and circumvent weak passwords include deploying a VPN (Virtual Private Network) for users you log in from unsecured public locations, generating employee passwords, or providing tools such as SecureSafe Pro or Norton’s Identity Safe that will enable employees to generate their own strong passwords.
Another typical problem with passwords is remembering them - that’s why often users use the same one for everything, which obviously poses a threat as should one account be compromised, the rest are too. Therefore, using tools like Google Authenticator
(2 Step Verification tool for Android and iPhone) combined with tools such as TeamPasswordManager can go a long way to supporting your users generate stronger, more secure passwords without having to remember them and eliminating that piece of paper under the keyboard or stuck to the monitor.
Tip #5:
Promote Physical Device Protection awareness. Similar to Tip #3, but this time focusing on ensuring mobile devices are safe from wandering hands and prying eyes rather than cyber threats. Leaving mobiles or laptops in plain sight on the passenger car seat, for example, is sadly just asking for trouble, and many a breach of company data has occurred this way.
Strong passwords and regular data backups go along way to protecting company info, but more can be done to reduce the risk of lost or stolen devices. Another tip would be to ensure laptop users set screen saver passwords (starting after a sensible time delay) as well as issuing Privacy Screens which help reduce the amount of info people looking over your shoulder can read.
If you are going down the mobile Unified Communications and Collaboration route, then choose a vendor who supports QR code provisioning and device pairing as both of these add additional security and thanks to device pairing, should a mobile device be lost or stolen, it can be easily unpaired and have it’s access to company data revoked.
Tip #6:
Putting the right team together. First things first, telephony systems these days have more to do with IT when compared to the traditional phone systems of old. Therefore, when assembling your team, make sure that IT is well represented and take the lead on the project. Next, mobile projects should include members from all your business departments.
IT, Human Resources, Operations, Security, Legal teams plus your core business personnel will all have a vested interest in the project, particularly when it comes to productivity and security. More importantly, they will all have their own ideas and needs, meaning compromises will have to be made from all involved in order for your policy to be successful - but in our experience, it is better to make concessions as opposed to ignoring needs.
Summary
The tips above can help your mobile projects fulfil your business requirements, but the most important aspect to never lose sight of is that at the end of the day, for your policy to be successful you need to consider how to improve the productivity and mobility of your users. So ask them what they want, need and expect. Working together with all your teams and their members and devising a solution that all parties buy into can go a long way towards ensuring the end strategy is successful.
If you would like more information regarding how our pascom VoIP Software PBX can help you implement a mobile working strategy, then get in touch with us either via our website or give us a call on + 49 991 29691 200.
Better yet, try our free hosted edition and discover first hand how pascom upgrades business communications.