The Risks of Social Media Apps and BYOD

When it comes to enterprise mobile security, knowing which apps your employees use most is key to securing enterprise information. Especially when it comes to BYOD, it’s impossible for you to control what kinds of apps your employees are using most and what kind of information is required to use those apps.

According to a recent Ericsson report on top mobile application usage, it was found that 61 percent of mobile application data is made up of social and personal apps, including Facebook (16%), YouTube (15%), Instagram (9%) and Snapchat (9%). People use their phones mostly for social media purposes and to stream video. This means that you are putting your information at risk especially if your employees are accessing both personal and corporate data on their devices.

Personal accounts, like Facebook can be hacked to access corporate data much easier than if a hacker was to try and break through your corporate fire wall, making social media apps an unchecked weak spot in your defense. Countless Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts get hacked every day for various reasons, some being for the soul purpose of getting at corporate data.

Having a secure enterprise mobility solution is the only way to ensure that you can keep track of how business data is being used across the company, including employee owned BYOD devices. EMM solutions can help manage access to the enterprise, ensuring that employees are able to securely access corporate information without the risk of leaking data.

Another benefit of EMM is that it allows enterprises to control specific device features and applications on corporate owned devices, thereby influencing how employees consume data, which in turn helps control costs. Enterprises can also whitelist and blacklist applications, preventing any device that touches the corporate network from using applications that could cause a data leak or security risk.

It’s not to say that employees can’t use social media apps on their corporate devices, especially if they are bringing their own devices, but not being aware of the potential threat and putting an EMM or MDM policy in place that takes these risks into consideration will render your data vulnerable.