Ride the Lightning

BYOD: Do You Feel Lucky? Well, Do Ya Punk?

July 15, 2013

Readers of a certain age will recognize the slightly mashed up quote of Clint Eastwood in one of the Dirty Harry movies. This was the closing sentiment of an interesting imaginary conversation between Dan and Jane about BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) in a law firm. The 3 Geeks and a Law Blog post (thanks Dave Ries) is a creative way to make BYOD advocates think about the dangers of allowing personal devices to willy-nilly connect to law firm networks.

Mind you, there are "controls" that can be imposed, technology that helps manage BYOD. But the more points of vulnerability you have, the greater the chance of a breach. From my bully pulpit, I continue to stress that lawyers have a special duty of care to protect client data. It makes no sense to have business data on anything other than a company-provided device. And since those devices will be selected for security and there will be fewer of them to manage, the odds of suffering a breach will be significantly reduced. Not to zero because that's not possible but I'll settle for a significant reduction.

I don't want to feel lucky, I want to feel safe.