Bring Your Own Device technologies are readily being adopted as a popular and cost-effective means of providing mobility and flexibility to employees. Consistent with most emerging technologies, there are a number of legal issues which are often not considered but which may have unintended impacts on an organisation’s risk profile.

BYOD programs do not, in themselves, present any new legal issues. Many of the legal challenges that are associated with BYOD technologies have existed since the adoption of mobile computing. What’s new, is the fact that the potential for issues to arise has increased dramatically given the widespread adoption of BYOD solutions.

Organisations need to consider the potential legal issues associated with BYOD solutions whether or not they have a formal BYOD program in place. Employees will, whether sanctioned or not, connect their personal devices to work systems (which quite often involves circumventing internal security protocols). This inadvertently exposes an organisation to a potentially uncontrolled level of risk without it even being aware.

While it is impossible to entirely remove any legal risk associated with BYOD programs (the very concept of allowing external devices to connect to, and interact with, a carefully managed IT system carries with it inherent dangers), there are a number of measures that organisations can adopt to limit their exposure.

The purpose of this presentation will be to highlight some of these legal risks and the techniques used to limit exposure, focusing in particular on issues arising in an Asia Pacific context.