Creating a BYOD workplace for your dental practice offers some distinct advantages to business in the form of improved employee productivity and engagement. These are not small benefits in today’s workplace.
Unfortunately, it brings its own share of risks to the table as well. These are just a few of the risks you should consider carefully before making the move to a BYOD workplace as they may have a significant impact on your dental practice.
What Could Go Wrong?
Just as you’d be wary of employees who come to work sick with viruses, you should also be wary of employee devices that may be infected with viruses you can’t see. While most software looks for bad things on the outside of the network, it is still vulnerable to dangers within. BYOD policies make it all too easy for employees to unknowingly expose the entire work network to viruses, malware, and more.
Other risks include:
- Theft of Device
- Loaning of Device
- Inadequate Device Security
- Information Remaining on Devices when Employee Upgrades (or passed along to children)
If these devices fall into malicious hands, the consequences could be devastating for your dental practice in terms of negative financial repercussions and beyond-repair brand reputation damage. This may be particularly detrimental for businesses, like those in the medical, insurance, and financial industries, where a sensitive and personal information data breach could cause undue harm, including identity theft, to the parties involved.
Preventing a Worst Case Scenario
While not all dental practices can accommodate BYOD policies in the workplace, those that do, must have a set of standards for making the transition as seamless and low-risk as possible.
- Create standards and policies that establish and define how the intellectual property of the business is to be accessed and treated on these devices.
- Create a plan of action, in writing, for handling the loss, theft, passing, or elimination of employee devices.
- Audit the program frequently to make sure it’s working in the best interest of the practice.
- Finally, understand that all businesses aren’t cut out for this specific work perk. Some businesses, such as legal entities, financial services business, medical firms, and insurance firms face huge legal liability risks when bringing mobile phones into the midst.
Before you decide to embrace the benefits of a BYOD workplace solution, make sure you fully expose the risks they represent for your dental practice.