Companies these days provide for mobile devices their employees use to ensure they’re available at all times. The downside of this is that their employees may also use these laptops and phones for personal use, all at the company’s expense, and the real risk of losing valuable data if they’re stolen. We’ve talked about data breaches caused by stolen laptops before. Companies should begin weighing the advantage of employee mobility with the disadvantages of possible data loss and decreased productivity.

It’s become much easier for employees to download movies, music, and watch video streaming while in the office and then load them to their mobile devices. Instead of working, they might be tempted to watch their downloads during company hours. Some pornography and gambling sites have begun to exploit this trend by offering their services for phones. These are the very same sites most hackers use to spread their viruses. This way confidential data on these devices can be breached and destroyed even without the user’s knowledge.

For the past few years companies have filtered e-mail and limited web access in the office, but similar control does not exist for mobile devices. Until the advent of similar filtering software, companies can opt to acquire and manage the distribution of their phones to their employees. In such a situation each employee is responsible for their usage. They can also create guidelines and policies to limit how the employees can and cannot use their phones, though they should be aware that their employees will resist stringent control.

[tags]mobility,productivity,mobile devices,filtering software,usage,software,employess[/tags]