BYOD/Mobile Device Security Risks

When it comes to mobile device security, the overlooked and unintended path is usually the best one to an objective. A bring-your-own-device policy for any company brings about a few apparent risks, including IoT device misconfiguration, mixing work and personal activity on the same device, home Wi-Fi security vulnerabilities, and lack of security precautions on the physical device. However, there are also other less obvious risks to a BYOD policy to consider. 

The desktop operating system has significantly matured since it first came out, making it much more difficult to compromise a modern, properly configured Windows 10 box. Microsoft has worked long and hard to make them secure and has come a long way since Windows XP. In contrast, the mobile operating system is relatively young. While the desktop operating system came out in the 1960s, mobile OS has only been around since the 1990s.

There are specific permissions a developer must set in an application to read, write, and delete what is on the SD card in the Android operating system. This is a little bit like if a website could not just download a file to your downloads folder but could also go through, read, modify and delete any files there that it saw fit. While this might be handy with contacts, if an employee has downloaded a file with sensitive data, it's a recipe for trouble.