Security Issues with Mobile IT: A Narrative Review of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD).

Abstract

The use of employee-owned mobile devices such as smart phones, tablets, laptops, etc., to access business enterprise content or networks otherwise referred to as of ‘Bring Your Own Device’ (BYOD) has further made the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of organizations’ data become insecure, and prone to breaches and fraudulent activities. In this study, the authors explored a narrative review that focuses on the theoretical underpinnings of vast works of literature that revealed significant information on the conceptual framework, existing systems that adopt BYOD security, analysis, and synthesis of prior research. Using some keywords “BYOD system security”, “BYOD security threats”, “cyber-attacks and security”, etc., an electronic database search extracted peer-reviewed articles from the last five years. The thematic analysis of fifty-one articles retrieved revealed that breaches and fraudulent activities exist with the use of BYOD that may be perpetrated against organization’s data, intentionally or maliciously. Good policies and guidelines on the use of BYOD coupled with good formulation and communication of same, should be adhered to avert some forms of security breaches. There is the need to preserve user’s privacy, organizations’ data confidentiality, integrity, and availability, and secure same in the devices of employees using their own devices to process corporate and personal data, by using acceptable and effective BYOD Policy and Mobile Device Management Solution (MDMS). This may increase mutual trust and BYOD adoption rate, new innovations and influence that can positively impact the organizations and their employees.

Keyword: BYOD, security threats, password, cyber-attacks and security, Information security.

DOI: 10.7176/JIEA/8-1-07