Employers’ Concern to Allow Smartphone at the Work Place

Smartphones are used to access new websites and applications by consumers. Mobile ownership has risen dramatically and has become an imperative tool for today’s highly mobile workforce. Typically, an employee comes to their workstation armed with the latest smartphone which might be an iPhone with lots of advanced features. Present day smartphones are highly advanced mobile communication devices that can perform an array of functions ranging from that of a simple digital organizer to PDA.

Many statistics about data breach show that un-monitored devices at the workplace are the foremost source of data leaks and worm occurrences. In the same manner, un-monitored iPhone and other smartphone devices can create serious problems for employers. Employees can install third party applications in their iPhone that could potentially hold malware codes just waiting to enter in your workplace network to contaminate it as soon as the iPhone is synced to the network.

Malware is often disguised as a game, device patch, utility or other useful third party application which your employee downloads. Once installed, these malware initiate a wide range of attacks and spread themselves to other devices in your network. Also, the iPhone is a handheld device and if it falls into the wrong hands, it could give access to information stored or enable network access remotely with relative ease.

Sadly, many IT departments are showing a binary attitude towards this major security issues. Either they prefer to totally ignore personal smartphones within their network, taking the perspective that it’s the employee’s device, so why bother supporting or even acknowledging its existence. Or to completely prohibit devices altogether on company premises.

“Neither approach is good for the business.”

Banning these smartphone devices is almost an extended way of ignoring the issue. But adopting the “disabling ports and forget” attitude can be pricey if a system is overlooked. Almost more than half of these companies reported that there are still unauthorized connections affecting their network enabling serious security issues or breach. It could happen due to these personal smartphone and iPhone devices within the network.

What steps can be taken to protect confidential information at the work place?

This is a major concern statement of today’s employers. Companies can use employee mobile monitoring software like Mobile Spy as the answer of their concerns. Mobile Spy is a monitoring software application that records cell phone activities, logs and GPS locations of the employee using the internet capabilities of their company issued smartphone and uploads them to your Mobile Spy account.  To view the recorded data, simply login to your secure online account at the Mobile Spy web site. Logs are displayed by categories and sorted for easy browsing.

Employers will also be able to monitor the smartphone screen and location on a map LIVE. You can view smartphone info instantly and use remote commands to control the device. This employee monitoring software also allows you to have your logs emailed to you. It is completely stealth and works independently. Mobile Spy does not rely on the smartphone’s call and message logs to record activities, so even if the user tries to delete their tracks, the data will still be retained and uploaded.

Security issues for smartphones are a part of major concerns. On one hand, smartphones help employees to communicate. But at the same time they increase the risk of data leakage, legal liabilities, damaging company reputation and productivity. Thus, due to this ever-increasing number of dangers associated with using a smartphone in the workplace, employers need to use employee monitoring software to prevent or at least minimize these risks.