By Steve Thorpe
Legal News
Businesses, especially law firms, now see their employees bring a steady stream of digital devices into the workplace. An employer is probably not going to stop that stream from flowing, especially because of the enormous productivity gains some of them have produced, but how can they protect their data and the confidentiality of their customers and clients?
IT that Works (ITTW) and Ossian Law PC combined to present a free Lunch & Learn Seminar on the topic “Bring Your Own Device (BYOD): How Personal Devices Put Your Organization At Risk” on Wednesday, Sept. 18. Kathy Ossian, founder of Ossian Law and Bob Breitman, president of IT that Works-Midwest, talked to attendees about privacy, security and data and how an organization can protect itself. They offered policies, procedures and technology solutions to help companies deal with employees’ mobile devices.
The topics included:
• Whose responsibility is it to protect and secure the device?
• What happens to company data if the device is lost or stolen, or an employee leaves the job?
• Could an organization be sanctioned if a contractor deletes from a personal laptop company information that falls within the scope of a litigation discovery request?
Ossian’s law focuses on information technology law. She has 30 years of legal experience and 16 years of IT law experience.
Breitman has more than 35 years of management and IT experience, including being the CIO of a $3.5 billion company. A regular speaker on IT issues and cloud computing, he is also the Cloud Track instructor for SPC International’s Business Boot Camps.
The flood of new and more powerful devices presents challenges for employers as they try to balance the needs of their employees and organizations with the security of their data and proprietary information.
“We have tablets, we have smartphones, we have Android, we have Apple iOS,” Breitman said. “We have to worry about both data security and user privacy. What happens when I have my personal data and corporate data on one device and whose device is it?”
And not only are there new devices doing new things every day, but the memory and capacity of those devices has grown exponentially.
“Every time there’s a new version of a device, it can hold more and more data,” said Ossian. “A lot of that data may be subject to privacy regulations, if it’s consumer data. It may be subject to HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) and other laws.”
Back in the days when the devices — computers, cell phones, pagers, etc. — that employees used on the job were nearly always company-owned, the dividing line between private and business was more clear cut. Those lines are increasingly blurred and it’s up to the employer to redraw them.
“I was originally going to talk about who ‘owns’ the information, but Kathy told me that the issue wasn’t ownership ...” Breitman began.
“Who controls it is the key,” Ossian finished. “Control, or lack of it, can lead to a number of different issues. These include privacy and data security and retrieval.”
And now, with “the cloud” muddying the waters with more and more information residing off site and accessible from anywhere, it’s more important than ever for employers to address the issues decisively and inform the employees of those decisions.
“You have to make sure your policy is clear, that you let employees know what it is and that you enforce it across the organization and not just selectively,” said Ossian.
If there was a single biggest “takeaway” from the information session, it was the critical importance of those steps.
“You really need to have policies in place. You need to make sure that they’re implementable, understandable and well communicated,” Breitman said. “And once those policies are in place, you need to have the employees consent to those policies.”
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