Mobile Mayhem: Smartphones and Security (Or the Lack Thereof)

Little computers, generically called “mobile devices,” are everywhere, like creatures sharing our environment with non-digital animals and insects. They come in all shapes and sizes: tablets as big as flat-screen TVs; wearable technology such as the Apple Watch, fitness bracelet or Bluetooth headset; and the undisputed king of mobile devices, our inseparable personal parasite ' the smartphone. Not only do these devices share our “physical” environment, they permeate our information technology environment. Connected in the atmosphere of the Internet, mobile devices breathe by inhaling and exhaling data, which travels across the globe, nearly instantaneously.

The Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy approach to employee devices is rampant, although of course adoption and implementation varies widely depending on industry regulatory environment and other variables. BYOD implementation can come in a wide variety of different formulations, but it essentially means that employees are choosing their own hardware and, to one degree or another, mixing personal and business use on a device. Some of these devices are like domesticated animals or tamed pets ' corporate-issued and configured, and strictly controlled by corporate IT. Others are only partially domesticated ' personally selected and purchased devices with corporate information management in the form of “mobile device management” or other controls. But most are just plain wild ' personal devices with no control from employers other than perhaps some unmonitored, unenforced, and mostly unread policy guidance.