Nowadays, many corporations in the private sector allow their employees to bring their own mobile devices, such as smart phones, tablets or laptops, to the workplace and access corporate information and services.  Although this practice can save cost for the corporations, and would bring job satisfaction to employees by allowing them to use the devices they like, it may complicate the job of risk management and constitute a breach of information security.

 

In the event the personal mobile device is lost or the employee leaves the business, unauthorised parties can retrieve any unsecured data on the device, resulting in leakage of sensitive corporate data.  Other than technology consideration before implementing BYOD, an organisation must work out a policy at the outset for governing reliability, accuracy and security of the organisational and personal data due to the weakness in mobile device control.

 

To make effective and timely use of advanced technology in support of the management of the Force and its operations, smart phones are being allocated to designated operational posts in phases, which are installed with an application, namely Mobile Workplace Services (MWS), for the Force's operational use in compliance with government security standard.  Frontline officers are able to view, send and receive Police emails using MWS while they are out of office, thereby enhancing our operational efficiency.