Every year more employees, managers, even CEOs are bringing their own devices from home to the workplace. Most cite the ease of use and familiarity of their own devices as reasons to prefer personal devices over the computers, tablets, and phones issued by their employers.

The danger of BYOD lies in the fact that personal devices are often less equipped to fight viruses that expose confidential data to onlookers. They can also be loaded with malicious apps, lost, stolen, or simply left out on a table
at home. Tech experts say that more corporate data is stored outside company firewalls than ever before, because
of the tendency to use personal devices for business.

Trying to fight the BYOD revolution is an uphill battle. But the good news is you can protect your information by using virtual machines to separate the personal from the corporate. A virtual machine is like a computer within a computer.

It runs on software installed in the device, and boots as a completely separate entity from the host computer’s operating system. With virtual machines, you can protect company data with all the firewalls and antivirus software you use on company computers, and still allow employees and executives to use the devices they like best in the workplace, the coffee shop, or their living rooms.