The folly of remote wipe in BYOD

Nobody wants to lose their personal data from a smartphone or tablet. It's no surprise that a majority of employees from a recent survey listed the fear of a remote wipe as a major barrier to BYOD success.

Email data protection company ZixCorp commissioned a survey of more than 1,000 employed individuals and found that seven out of 10 would avoid using a personal device for work if they knew an employer could remotely wipe it. -- Is a Remote-Wipe Policy a Crude Approach to BYOD Security?

Tom Kanishige, writing for CIO.com, highlights the trouble with remote wipe in a BYOD program. Not only does it decrease user participation (due to fear of losing data), it's also not very effective as a security measure. When a BYOD device goes missing, most employees wait hours—or days—before reporting the loss to IT. A determined attacker could easily turn the device off or disrupt its network connection, making a remote wipe impossible.

This point highlights the need for BYOD tools and processes to fit the needs and expectations of IT security and users alike. JAMF Software built the Casper Suite BYOD solution to resolve this tension with a capability set designed for personal device management. 

These capabilities allow IT to enforce passcodes, encryption, and other security settings to ensure a device is not compromised. Meanwhile, transparency is provided to users by showing them what IT can and cannot do to the user’s device when they enroll, including the ability to wipe only corporate data. With the Casper Suite, users are far more likely to enroll their devices in MDM, which is the first step towards a BYOD program’s success.