BYOD, Are You Prepared? Questions You Should Ask.
 by Jack Safrit, CEO of Axxys Technologies

No, I’m not talking about having a party but rather one of the hottest topics in technology today. Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is becoming an absolute factor in almost every business today. Your employees, vendors, and guests all probably bring some type of personal communication device or their own notebooks to your workplace every day. Many employees are using their own devices to connect to your business networks, if for nothing more than the receipt of your corporate email. So why is BYOD a hot topic?

Many companies provide their employees laptops and smartphones to serve as their business computing and mobile communications devices. The business owns those devices, and as a result, the business can control the security of those devices and any business data that the user had downloaded to them. When Blackberry was a standard, Blackberry server handled many of the business security concerns present in mobile devices. Today, we see that burden of security falling back on the business and their IT departments as many employees are bringing their own smartphones, tablets, and notebooks to the office or are connecting to your business network remotely to do their work. And while that ability has certainly may potentially make them more productive, it certainly has made it more difficult to control access.

Questions you need to ask about BYOD at your business

  • What happens when a user loses their smartphone or tablet? Have they lost your vital, business confidential information also?
  • Are your employees using more and more of your bandwidth by connecting to the Internet with not just their computer, but also their smartphones and tablets?
  • Are they using their personal devices to text, to listen to music, or to surf the Internet – activities not related to their business role?
  • Is your IT department receiving more calls from employees asking for help to connect those devices to your network or to fix a problem with those devices? How many different types of devices is IT having to support?
  • Are you responsible for the non-business information that is on those devices or flowing through your network if your policy is to allow employees to use them in business or if you reimburse them for some of their cost?
  • Do you have a policy in place that allows your IT department to remotely “wipe” those devices if lost or stolen to protect any corporate data like contact info, confidential emails, executive schedules that your employee may have downloaded?

Consider these solutions

  • Decide what you want your IT providers or IT department to support. Their time is valuable and working on personal devices can be a distraction to business critical work.
  • Establish a policy for personal devices and let users know that your business information is yours and you will take steps to protect that information – no matter where it resides. Axxys has all employees agree to allow the company to do a remote wipe of any device they use. This permission is a condition of employment and is designed to protect our information and the information of our clients.
  • Make sure your company has appropriate Internet usage rules in place and that all employees understand proper Internet behavior and usage.
  • Consider standardizing or which devices are allowed for business use. Some are more secure that others and the shorter the acceptable list is, the more efficient IT can be.

Finally, the November 15, 2011 issue of the Wall Street Journal dedicated an entire page to the BYOD concern. (See link: Is It Better for Businesses to Adopt Open or Closed Platforms?)