As we enter 2023, the most significant cybersecurity themes companies will face will revolve around threats coming from Employee-Targeted Digital Risks. This emerging threat surface represents attacks that come to the enterprise via their employees' personal devices, accounts, and digital lives. In 2022, we saw security incidents at Microsoft, Cisco, Uber, and others that originated in employees' personal digital worlds, outside of the areas normally safeguarded by corporate-controlled cybersecurity. This rapidly emerging problem is driving our growing need for better security and privacy, and its best and possibly only solution lies at the intersection of HR benefits and an IT department's BYOD policy.

A BYOD – or "Bring Your Own Device" – policy sets out the rules for which employees can use personal devices to access company systems like email and Slack. Many companies already rely on personal devices for two-factor authentication by SMS or authenticator apps as their primary means for cybersecurity. Currently, even companies with robust BYOD policies usually implement weak cybersecurity measures that can annoy users and, at worst, violate their privacy. The solution to this problem is in giving employees real, professional-grade cybersecurity measures that they can use in their personal lives as well as at work.

To understand why, we have to dive a little deeper into how we got here. Enterprise cybersecurity has come a long way in the last decade. That improvement has come from the adoption of mature cybersecurity frameworks, enterprise tools, cyber insurance, legal policies, and an ecosystem of educational programs that train specialized computer security professionals. Today, companies spend more money than ever to protect their data and systems. Plus, the use of cloud servers and cloud-based software has helped companies share some of the burdens of protecting their core technical infrastructure.