Enterprise mobility holds an important place within the oil and gas industry. With applications shifting from desktop to the cloud and becoming easily accessible on smart phones and other mobile devices, organizations are significantly improvising over their operational efficiency as well as real-time decision making capabilities.
However we understand that managing costs, support & security of these devices in a BYOD deployment environment is becoming more and more challenging.
Challenges
- Roaming Expenses: Keeping an account over unauthorized international roaming and other mobile device usage behaviors’ that have expensive consequences.
- Security: Maintaining tabs for on-the-go users who have access to a variety of devices, computers, and connectivity sources can be tough as security is a major issue. If left unmanaged BYOD can lead to loss of control, affect network availability and cause data loss.
- Corporate Liability: It all comes down to who is responsible for getting targets achieved through mobile assets as many CIO’s are of the opinion that the BYO model removes corporate liability for the device and the service plan for the employee.
- Governance & Compliance: BYOD could cause you to violate rules, regulations, trust, intellectual property and other critical business obligations. The right network access strategies and policies are needed to secure your environment.
Solutions
BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) delivers a robust, simple, scalable and secure method to allow your enterprise to allow users to access corporate information from their personal devices.
Setting Geofencing Boundaries
- Automatically activates and deactivates device features and access to apps and corporate data on the basis of GPS location of enrolled mobile devices
- Workforce is mobilized with automatic Wi-Fi and email server access configuration as devices move in and out of geofence boundaries
- Within geo fenced work locations, restricted access to sensitive corporate apps and market apps are enabled. Also, camera and other device settings are disabled to protect sensitive corporate information.
Restricting App Access
- Oil and gas enterprises are given complete control as to how their workforce uses their mobile devices when they are both on and off work premises. For example: A company that doesn’t want its employees to access social networking websites on their corporate-owned devices can block access to the sites across all their mobile devices.
- Restrictions for certain features such as personal e-mail can also be enabled with this solution to prevent employees from using those features on their devices.
Creating Application Blacklists and Whitelists
- Accessing public mobile apps can be controlled with the help of custom whitelist and blacklist policies. Apps which are recognized as ‘safe’ for the workplace are categorized as white listed as they have been granted permission for usage across all mobile devices. Blacklisted apps on the other hand are restricted from usage.
Tracking Expenses
- This solution ensures that there are no more unaccounted expenditures as it provides enterprises with a detailed insight into how much they are paying for mobile communications on a monthly basis and the utility of those costs.
- It also provides reports and audit bills regarding usage spikes so as to notify senior management, thus adjusting work patterns and cost optimization together.
Features
Unique Policy Management: We deliver a unified security policy across the entire organization and an optimized and managed experience for varied users with diverse business, security and device requirements. This policy helps you detect the device and the associated user, run a security check for clearance of viruses and bugs and determine what systems and applications they have access too.
Also, BYOD is a network-centric, integrated approach to security that enables:
- Persistent security across all devices (traditional PCs and mobile devices)
- Cloud-based web security for Internet, intranet, and cloud-based services
- Separation of personal and enterprise apps and content while preserving the native mobile user experience
- Use of all access methods (wired, wireless and VPN)
- Privacy policy and selective wipe to secure corporate data while protecting personal data
- Secured e-mail which minimizes the risk of data loss
- Device Registration Portal for employee self-service
Benefits of BYOD
- Simplifies the mobile management process for enterprise organizations
- Combines mobile device management, mobile expense management, and mobile apps
- Reduces corporate and personal liability and risks
- Built for mid-size enterprises with field service operations
- Increases efficiency for employees by securing mobile devices and data access
Why Mobisoft Infotech for BYOD?
Because a closely integrated system is always the strongest. To enhance the productivity we offer BYOD as well as CYOD solutions to help control devices as they connect to your networks, data and apps. We can help ensure a smooth workflow and secure operations across a wide range of devices.
Apart from BYOD, we also recommend an alternative mobility strategy which can be pursued, CYOD (Choose Your Own Device).
CYOD (Choose Your Own Device)
Pre Approved Device, owned by company, can be used anywhere
While many organizations are implementing BYOD programs, issues regarding security, management, support and compliance are major concerns. But when it comes to employees using personal devices in the workplace, companies need a balanced requirement between ‘productivity’ and ‘security’ which has given rise to CYOD.
What is CYOD?
Unlike BYOD, which encourages employees to work on a personally owned device, choose-your-own-device (CYOD) offers employees the freedom to use approved company-issued devices. In short, CYOD strategies indicate more control for IT, while still providing employees the flexibility to use the device of their preferred choice.
Challenges
The leading challenge faced by CYOD models for the company is to cover the exorbitant capital expenditure of the device. Most of the issues faced by CYOD models are similar to BYOD; they just take a simpler form and over time they generate fewer complexities and lower costs. They are:
- Compliance & Governance
- Security & Network Access Control
- IT Support
BYOD v/s CYOD: Achieving the best of both models
The indicator of a good CYOD policy provides your employees with freedom and mobility, without your IT Department losing control of company data. The key to success is to guarantee a secure workspace for easy IT management, security policy enforcement and offline capability.
- Mobility is the core requirement for companies to perform tasks accurately and BYOD as well as CYOD operate on the same.
- Issues regarding user privacy & corporate data security are a constant concern within the BYOD industry and lesser within CYOD as the devices are company-owned.
- BYOD complicates IT security and manageability efforts. CYOD calls for high hardware acquisition costs, but can enforce clear-cut manageability and security policies.
Choosing between these models has their set of pros and cons, while providing varied benefit levels for IT. Thus, before choosing, your IT team should take the apt decision for their specific security posture & compliance requirements, while ensuring employee satisfaction too.
