The guidance on ‘bring your own device’ (BYOD), the trend which has seen an increasing number of businesses allow staff to carry out work on personal devices, highlighted the impact that BYOD can have on existing commercial arrangements.

“You will … need to consider how any commercial or second party agreements are affected by adopting BYOD,” the guidance said. “For example, there may be existing commercial agreements between organisations that restrict the running of business software on personally owned devices.”

The new guidance highlighted data privacy and security concerns that businesses need to manage if they implement BYOD in their organisation. It pointed to existing data protection guidelines issued by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) to address the BYOD trend and backed the ICO’s suggestion that every organisation adopt a specific BYOD policy to set out to employees what data they are permitted to share from their personal devices.

“You should design your network architecture so that staff can only access the information that you are willing to share,” the guidance said.

SOURCE: out-law.com