Consumerisation of information technology will continue to shift the way employees interact with enterprise applications and information, which raises considerable security challenges to any organisation, said an expert.

This prevailing movement is now becoming popular in Bahrain and is also known as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), reported the Gulf Daily News, our sister publication.

"These devices may include an array of tablets, Apple and Android smartphones, Wintel laptops and devices we have yet to see," said Paul Wright, the manager of AccessData (Middle East, India and Africa).

"For some organisations, such as universities, the array of user devices may be unlimited and therefore their grasp on securing data may be tenuous for quite some time. Other organisations will be in a better position to leverage policy to control the acceptable devices allowed and to ensure they have the ability to investigate these devices as needed," he stated.

To make BYOD viable, Wright said organisations rely on two key ingredients, authentication and policy.

"Authentication ensures that the right individuals and devices are allowed access to the appropriate resources. Policy ideally defines what is allowed from a usage perspective, establishes the organisation's right to investigate employee-owned work devices, and outlines any security applications that are required to be installed on the employee devices," he said.

Wright said much of the industry conversation revolves around an organisation's ability to monitor and examine employee-owned devices.

"Due to legal questions and privacy requirements, many organisations still do not have BYOD policies. However, whether an organisation has successfully implemented a concrete policy or not, the fact is the most critical elements in securing your enterprise against BYOD threats is enterprise visibility and remote remediation capabilities," he added.-TradeArabia News Service