Draw a B, Y, O and a D you’d be forgiven for wailing and gnashing your teeth if these letters make up your last chance to win the Scrabble game, but it's becoming a common term in IT: 65 percent of global enterprises will offer at least limited support for BYOD by the end of this year.
Global Information Inc. tells us BYOD policies have accelerated over the last few years, pretty much in line with a more technically literate workforce and the introduction of powerful mobile devices capable of acting as clients for most enterprise systems. The global roll-out of LTE/4G variants, and carrier deployments of offloading solutions including Femtocell, Metrocell, and Wi-Fi networks are also enabling mobile workers to get a good connection more easily and more reliably -- though the cost of their deployment very likely spells the end to 'all-you-can-eat' data deals.
BYOD isn’t a free for all. For employees, the personal autonomy promised by use of their chosen mobile device comes at the cost of agreeing to company BYOD policy. For firms, the task is to develop effective and relevant policies.
Surprising Legal Facts About BYOD - Searches, Seizures, And More
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“Finding the balance between control, access, and cost will be an ongoing challenge, requiring negotiations between finance, risk management, and customer-facing organizations for employee-liable mobile devices. Formalized mobile governance functions will help CIOs find a better balance," said Dave McNally, IT executive advisor with IDC.
Unfortunately, users don't always follow the rules. Some of this can be blamed on cultural differences: in Germany 50 percent of people will follow company rules governing remote working, while in the UK just 36 percent will do the same. A recent Imation Mobile Security research report shows 18 percent of workers in the UK and 25 percent of French workers will ignore corporate policy governing remote access.
“What is clear is that not enough organizations are providing the right technology and putting in place the right processes to ensure staff are working securely,” said Imation’s Nick Banks.
“Given the amount of employees who admitted to ignoring corporate IT guidelines, as well as the numerous cases of human error being to blame for major security breaches, organizations cannot make secure working ‘opt-in’. Instead they should look at ways to empower mobile workers and provide them with all the tools they need to remain productive, while guaranteeing corporate data is secure,” he added.
Imation ranks staff education as one of the three important tasks enterprises must accomplish to make BYOD successful, right alongside employing device management technology and encryption.
Yet, a Coalfire survey reveals that 49 percent of US workers whose firms have moved to BYOD haven’t discussed security issues on mobile devices with them yet.
Explaining why policies are required, what they are, what they achieve and how to implement them, is even more important when you consider the average number of connected devices per worker is expected to hit 3.3 by 2014.
