BYOD on Campus: Managing Personal Devices
Students and staff bring their own devices. Here is how to manage them securely.
Bring your own device (BYOD) is the norm on campus. Students arrive with phones, laptops, tablets and gaming consoles, and staff often use personal devices too. Institutions cannot install software on all of them or control how they are maintained, but they can manage the risks at the network level.
Know who is connecting
Require users to authenticate with institutional credentials. Linking devices to users enables fair usage limits, accountability and faster investigation of problems.
Keep personal devices separate
Place BYOD devices on student or staff segments that are isolated from administrative systems, exam platforms and CCTV.
Protect at the network layer
Firewall threat protection and DNS filtering defend every device without requiring software on it, blocking malware sites and phishing links.
Limit devices per user
Device limits keep the network fair and stop shared credentials from spreading.
Set clear acceptable-use rules
An acceptable-use policy explains what is allowed, what is filtered and how misuse is handled. Present it during orientation.
Provide secure access to resources
Use secure portals and single sign-on for academic resources instead of giving personal devices broad network access.
Detect and isolate infections
Monitoring can identify devices contacting malicious domains. Move them to a quarantine network and notify the owner with clear instructions.
Respect privacy
Focus on protecting the network rather than monitoring individuals, and be transparent about what is logged.
The bottom line
BYOD is manageable with authentication, segmentation and network protection. UbiFi Managed Firewall supports safe, fair BYOD on campus.
Learn more about Managed Firewall for Education from UbiFi, or talk to our team.
A next-generation firewall for your campus — supplied, configured and monitored by UbiFi, with content filtering and student-safe policies.
