Mobile Safety Precautions Introducing VoIP to Your Workforce
In the modern office, VoIP is where office phones meet the mobile workforce. Where your work phone numbers cross smoothly from desk handsets to cellphones to personal laptops, tablets, and home computers. Of course, in the age of cybersecurity; With great accessibility comes great responsibility. The more you enable your employees to connect their personal devices to the company number and VoIP platform, the more careful your workforce must become about device security. It's a natural consequence of mobility.
Fortunately, it's not difficult to build a few company-wide safety precautions for mobile use of VoIP numbers. Follow these steps or use them as a guide to build your own methods of ensuring safe mobile connection to company phones.
BYOD Day
Bring Your Own Device or BYOD is a trend in the business world inviting employees to use their own phones and tablets for business mobile purposes. When integrating VoIP into the office, you can be sure that employees will use the convenient features to connect their own devices to their new number and communication platform.
BYOD-Day can be announced something like an on-shift holiday like staff picture day. Ask everyone to bring in the devices they will be using for work so that the company can provide a complimentary security check. This will allow you to make sure that no viruses are currently on each device and that they are reasonably safe for company use.
Data Clean-Up
Now is a good time to encourage data clean-up. Any old photos, videos, or downloaded media that's still on the devices should be reviewed and anything unwanted should be deleted. Just before BYOD day, let employees know that they might want to clear anything personal, embarrassing, or unprofessional from devices they plan to use for work. This is a courtesy everyone will appreciate as they quickly delete last year's Halloween photos and their Game of Thrones fan-fics.
List of Approved Devices
VoIP allows accounts and numbers to be accessed from any device. This is great in an emergency but an interesting cybersecurity challenge. consider recording the MAC addresses or other identifying feature of each approved employee device. This way, a small red flag will appear if a number is accessed from an unknown device. In best-case scenarios, the employee will quickly authorize themselves on the new device. In a best-worst scenario, you'll spot a hacker the moment they try to tap into the network.
Device Virus Scanning
With each device brought in, perform an all-points virus scan to ensure that employees do not accidentally have malware already on phones, tablets, and laptops that they brought in. The virus scan is good for protecting company data and it's a complimentary cybersecurity bonus for the employees.
Company Security Software
If you have any security software licenses for the company that will extend to mobile devices or laptops, offer to install them on employee devices. It is in the company's best interest to prevent employee work-used devices from potential hacker attacks, malware, and theft. If you are extending your mobile capabilities to data management work platforms then it is very important to defend devices that access that information through apps or communications.
Kill Switches & Location Tracking
In the event that an employee loses a device they use for work, your company can offer some solutions by installing them on BYOD day. Emergency location tracking (only turned on when a device is missing) is usually considered the best solution for finding lost or stolen devices without invading an employee's privacy. For devices that handle sensitive information or text-communication of a sensitive nature, consider a kill-switch which can wipe specific data or reset the device entirely to ensure that thieves can't access company, client, or employee data.
Interval Re-Scanning
Finally, remember to re-scan devices from time to time. Once every six months to a year may be sufficient. O if you handle sensitive matters on a regular basis, once a month may be more appropriate. You can install device scanning software that can be triggered remotely or initiate a BYOD-Day tradition where everyone brings their devices in for IT to check.
---
For more security procedures relating to VoIP and the mobile workforce, contact us today!