Technology

The importance of security in the modern BYOD workplace

Our workforces are now more mobile than ever. Whether they are working from home, on the road giving presentations or even in the office, it is more than likely that a companies employees are connected and working. However, unlike traditional work environments, it is probable that many of these employees are not connected using company equipment or devices.

Due to advancements in technology, the prevalence of startup culture and a workforce which can now work remotely, we have seen a dramatic rise of companies encouraging “bring your own device” (BYOD) environments in workplaces across the world. Incredibly, 59% of organizations allow employees to use their own devices for work purposes. Another 13% had planned to allow use within a year. What’s more, As of 2016, 60% of companies had a BYOD-friendly policy in place.

This has given employees unprecedented flexibility, a benefit which 80-90% of American workers want to work remotely at least part-time. However, this flexibility has come at a cost. A multitude of threats from hackers has arisen due to many weaknesses that can be exploited in the modern BYOD culture. However, there is good news as common practices and the right technology can help tie up these loose ends.

Firstly, employees should be taught the essentials of devices protection. As the popular Cyber Security company, Trend Micro, states employees that are untrained are susceptible to threats such as Phishing attacks on their personal devices which can spread, leading to a much more serious threat for the company.

Additionally, the correct technology should be utilized to monitor and counter threats. One company which can help with this is Axonius. The company, which has bases in Tel-Aviv and New York, today announced that just six months after raising a $4 million seed round, its Cybersecurity Asset Management Platform is now publicly available. The platform provides enterprises with full visibility into all devices in use in their networks, allowing them to view and secure all.

As cases of corporate hacking and data breaches increase year by year, Axonius takes a decidedly retro approach to solving cybersecurity’s biggest challenge: knowing which devices are accessing information, and understanding whether those devices are secure. By leveraging the security and management tools customers already have, Axonius can give a comprehensive view of all devices and let customers take action to secure all devices.

The Cybersecurity Asset Management Platform works by integrating with customers existing management and security technologies. By using an extensible plugin infrastructure to add custom logic, the platform provides customers with a unified view of all devices – both known and unknown. The platform gathers data from identity and authentication solutions, network solutions like NAC, firewalls, vulnerability scanners, and switches, security solutions such as SIEM and EDR, and device specific management products such as MDM, IoT, and OS-specific products.

“We started this company to bring cybersecurity back to basics,” said Dean Sysman, CEO and co-founder of Axonius. “The explosion in the number and types of devices we use to work every day combined with trends like BYOD, virtualization, containers, and IoT have made it extremely difficult to answer questions like ‘how many devices are in my environment and are they secure?’ With Axonius, customers get those answers.”

In today’s digital world, most companies are using an array of mobile devices, Macs, virtual machines, and other cloud services. Even those companies who can afford their own SOCs (Security Operations Centers), are at risk of fragmentation problems. Axonius, however, can give any customer complete visibility into every device. By knowing which devices are susceptible, customers can then take action to secure them.

With over 100,000 devices already managed at early customers worldwide, today’s announcement marks the official availability of the platform in advance of the worlds largest cybersecurity conference, the RSA Conference 2018 held in San Francisco.

As the old saying goes “knowledge is power” and in light of this and the work of Axonius, knowing what devices are susceptible to attack might be the difference between your company information remaining secure or falling into the hands of the wrong people.

As Sysman adds “Of all the controls we consider to be ‘the basics’ of information security, asset management is considered the first and most critical.” Therefore, while security is essential, we should turn our attention away from security and towards a more omniscient system, making sure everyone is working safely on their devices.

Sam Brake Guia

Sam is an energetic and passionate writer/presenter, always looking for the next adventure. In August 2016 he donated all of his possessions to charity, quit his job, and left the UK. Since then he has been on the road travelling through North, Central and South America searching for new adventures and amazing stories.

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42Gears says:

May 9, 2018 at 8:22 AM

As per Gartner report, by 2012 enterprises will be seeing 27 percent of corporate data traffic flowing directly to the cloud from mobile devices. This means that enterprises have to start embracing mobility management solutions that not only offer device management but also offer management policies to secure corporate data.