BIT309 - Auditing and Security Management Assignment

Running head: CHALLENGES OF BOYD IN INFORMATION AUDITING AND
SECURITY MANAGEMENT
Challenges of BOYD in Information Auditing and Security Management
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CHALLENGES OF BOYD IN INFORMATION AUDITING AND SECURITY
MANAGEMENT
Challenges of BOYD in Information Auditing and Information Security Management
Bring Your Own Device is a situation where the employees of a company are allowed by
the management to carry their laptops and phones to the workplace. By allowing the employees
to take their own devices, the efficiency at the workplace is improved since each employee will
be using their device and there will be no sharing and improves networking between the workers
and clients (Mark, 2015). All these benefits are brought about by the ease access to their emails,
customer contacts, work files and access to internet services at any place and time. There is also
the merit of cost reduction in that the quantity of hardware that the company is required to
purchase will significantly reduce and the amount will be allocated to other uses. The facility
also creates potential attraction to the service and most especially to the employees who enjoy
using personal devices. There are several limitations involved with these devices and are
discussed in the subsequent section.
Use of BOYD at institutions has the potential to raise severe issues that will have an
adverse impact on the establishment regardless of the convenience they create to the employees.
Loss of very vital data is possible since every individual has access to the database and thus not
likely to hold any person accountable for the data loss. According to the second chapter of the
Fundamentals of Information Systems Security, the greatest risk to information is when the
devices that are being used by the employees will connect to a network that is not secure for
internet services. This risk is brought about by the lack of passwords in public which will leads
to display of all the information in the text. In most corporate organizations, the use of a VPN is
very typical because it ensures all data is secure and unauthorized access is not possible (Arnab,
Prashant & Shashikant, 2013). Recently, there has been advancement in data security, and there
are virtual networks that will require a password to access data. These security measures ensure

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CHALLENGES OF BOYD IN INFORMATION AUDITING AND SECURITY
MANAGEMENT
that unauthorized users can not access the most critical data in the organization. Theft is also
another risk factor to the use of the personal devices at the workplace. If the device is stolen, data
is easily leaked. Access to this data will affect the organization negatively since all the
information regarding their operations has been obtained and can be used for unscrupulous
means (French, Guo & Shim, 2014).
Some of the employees prefer the use of simple passwords that are easy to remember, and
this has greater security risk because of the possibility for the hackers to bypass the password and
gain entry into the organization's database (Panko, & Panko, 2014). The hackers steal all the data
from the device. Various research studies have been conducted on the method that different
companies use in sharing their data, and they have indicated that 41% of mobile business users in
the US attested to using unsanctioned services for file sharing or sync (Tony, 2011). On the
contrary, 87% of them acknowledged that they were aware that their respective organizations
prohibited this practice. 25% indicated that there were severe repercussions that were associated
with the revelation of the unauthorized sharing of information which included penalties of up to
$2 billion or to severe cases loss of the business (Darren, 2014). It is, therefore, the role of every
organization to ensure that their information has been protected to the extent that it will be hard
for any external user to gain access to the information.
BOYD use in the business could lead to the loss of very crucial data if hackers gain
access and this information includes distributors and employee records, billing information for
the employees, payment information, monthly statements and scheduling details. The loss of this
information will mean that the health facility was as good as not being in operation since the
information that guides its activities has been stolen and that regaining it would be an arduous
task (Paul & Phillip, 2016).