BYON is a by-product of increasingly common technology that allows users to create their own mobile networks, usually through mobile wireless hotspots. Security professionals say BYON requires a new approach to security because some internal networks may now be as insecure as consumer devices.

Jim Kunick, an attorney with the Chicago law firm Much Shelist, said BYON represents a more dangerous threat to data security than employees who bring their own smartphones or tablets into the office. "The network thing blows this up completely, because it takes the data out of the network the company protects," he said. "There's no way to ensure the security of that data. People are running corporate apps and processing corporate and client data using networks that may or may not be secure.

"I mean, no one is sure the Boingo network is secure," he said.

Kunick, an intellectual property attorney, said BYON is cropping up in start-ups, particularly at software development firms and entities that rely on cloud services.

"[BYON] allows people to run applications in three different cloud-based environments at one time because they're on their own network, they're on a network that they contracted with and they're on the corporate network," he said.