Addressing Security Concerns in BYOD through Sandboxing

A new trend of implementing Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) as an IT policy is being adopted by companies worldwide. It permits employees to bring their own portable devices like tablets, smartphones, etc to workplace and use them to access confidential corporate information while being both inside and outside their place of work. BYOD clearly raises serious security concerns since the device in question is not under the control of the enterprise and is vulnerable to a wide range of security threats. One of the major concerns in implementing a BYOD policy is data security and privacy. By allowing employees to access privileged corporate information on their personal devices, pertinent corporate data may be compromised. In this article, we address this problem and propose a solution that enhances the security in the BYOD scenario without compromising the usability and flexibility of the system. We suggest a sandbox which takes care of common connection, encryption and other security credentials for BYOD applications and helps monitor application usage on device for administrators.