BYOD stands for bring-your-own-device and it’s a concept that’s gaining in popularity among most major companies, especially those that allow telecommuting. Most employer policies on BYOD cover productivity and ensuring the employees are using the right laptops, tablets, smart phones and relevant software to perform necessary tasks.

Understandably, these same employees will use their devices for personal use as well as business use. By doing this, the employee opens up the possibility that corporate data may be inadvertently shared, or worse — hacked. By having a solid BYOD policy in place, employers can better protect themselves not only while an employee is with the company, but also once an employee leaves the company.

According to an article on Workforce.com, many companies have not thoroughly determined how to recapture company information once an employee walks out the door for good. If the technology isn’t already in place, then the risk of the data being unrecoverable is fairly high. Even worse is if a former employee still has access to the company’s intranet and abuses that access. Employers need to have policies and technology in place with BYOD employees and then regular audits to ensure that these policies are being enforced in order to keep data and network access secure.

Access to sensitive data can be restricted in many ways depending on the level of security a company wants, but one thing that should definitely be considered is technology that can remotely “wipe” this data instantly in real time. This technology could even be set up so that it’s triggered automatically if a device is lost or stolen. However, while wiping can delete company data, it can also delete personal data. Legally and politically this is a delicate situation and the BYOD policy should explicitly state how that will happen. One way to keep company and personal data separate is by use of partitioned sections. That way, only data within that area is deleted.

There is definitely a balance between what data an employee can have on his or her device and what is considered off limits. A good BYOD policy that is strictly enforced will go a long way in ensuring that sensitive and valuable company information is kept as secure and protected as possible.