Managing Employees' Use of Personal SmartPhones and Tablets for Work

By Philip L. Gordon

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal aptly identified several challenges that employers face when they allow employees to use their personal smartphones and tablets for work. The article, entitled “So You Want To Use Your iPhone For Work? Uh-Oh. How The Smartest Companies Are Letting Employees Use Their Personal Gadgets To Do Their Jobs,” notes several steps employers are taking to reduce privacy and information security risks. These steps include the following: (a) requiring that employees enable passwords, (b) sending a “kill command” to wipe business information from a lost or stolen device, and (c) walling off sensitive data into an “encrypted container.” While these steps are all useful, they comprise only a partial list of critical issues employers should consider before permitting employees to use a personal device for work.

Continue reading on Littler's Workplace Privacy Counsel blog.