Enterprise mobility, mobile sales enablement, digital content management, CMS, CRM, cloud computing…the list of top mobile technology terms is daunting and constantly changing. Conquering the title wave of mobility can be intimidating for both small business owners and major corporations alike; security risks consistently being the leading issue in the mind’s of decision makers. Although today’s business leaders strive to be innovative while simultaneously meeting their employees’ needs and keeping costs down, many struggle with the risks that come with adopting a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policy.
Large companies are struggling to maintain enterprise level security policies while keeping current with the fast changing technology landscape of enterprise mobility. In addition, they are constantly called to quell core business concerns that arise around mobile-based initiatives. The BYOD movement is still seen as extremely risky. In an effort to help broker a compromise, I’ve listed the 3 common concerns around BYOD policies and the solutions that should make adoption less daunting for technology managers.
It’s a Security Nightmare
When asked to comment on the so-called security nightmare of BYOD, Dell’s Director of Enterprise Mobility, Roger Bjork, states that data security issues are “probabilities, not possibilities”. A recent study of IT executives and CEOs uncovered that almost half of companies that allow BYOD have experienced minimal to major data and security troubles. This doesn’t exactly help in swaying decision makers to open the floodgates for BYOD use.
However, there is hope! By adopting a user-centric approach to your BYOD policy, the focus shifts to user profiles rather than actual devices, leaving user experience unharmed and saving your IT department from some major headaches. Through user-centric, device agnostic mobile solutions, the specific resolution doesn’t necessarily dictate the user experience. This way, your internal IT department won’t have to make major changes on the back end, nor will they have to come up with a laundry list of differing mobile policies for the plethora of different devices used in the office.
For more on this school of thought and end-to-end management in general, click here.
It’s More Difficult to Protecting Your Data… And Your Client’s
Another threat associated with BYOD is data syncing on mobile. Most companies have a universal network stocked with digital content, image assets, sensitive client information, year-end summaries and financial spreadsheets – much of which could be deemed as confidential and classified information. The majority of the time mobile data synching by employees is done as part of the way they perform their role, however, it’s important to take into account what needs to happen when an employee leaves the company and how to deal with the occasional bad egg. In this case, the ability to remote wipe all files residing with the enterprise mobile app and on an employees device is a huge advantage.
It’s Becoming Hard to Separate Work from Play
We’re all human. We all get distracted. Especially when our hands are constantly holding a mobile device and distractions are only a click away. Monitoring the use and adoption of the enterprise mobile applications residing on employees’ devices can help encourage remote workers to use them in a productive manner as much as possible and validate to stakeholders that the enterprise apps are providing value to the intended end-users.
It is important to advocate the use of mobile devices as productivity enhancers and limit distractions as much as possible. According to Kelly Services, “51% of all Americans believe that utilizing social media during work hours hinders productivity, and that those born between the year of 1980-1985 are twice as likely to waste time via sites such as Facebook and Twitter”. Unfortunately, results of social media-based studies like this could drive some companies to completely suspend BYOD policies so that they maintain absolute control over their employees mobile devices. In this day and age we know that absolute control is impossible. Control and flexibility need to be two sides of the same coin. Unless you want personality-vacant robots working for you, accept the occasional distraction and allow for productive alternatives outside of the glowing boxes in front of them.
Bottom line: BYOD environments are still a toss-up in the eyes of decision makers. With these solutions in mind, do the benefits outweigh the risks for your company?
Sources:
Gene Marks, “Do You Really Need A BYOD Policy?” Forbes
http://www.forbes.com/sites/quickerbettertech/2013/02/25/do-we-really-need-a-byod-policy/
Cheryl Conner, “Employees Really Do Waste Time At Work, Part II,” Forbes
Colin Neagle, “BYOD Policy Bites Vacationing CEO,” Networkworld
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/043012-byod-mimecast-258799.html
Roger Bjork, “Protect and Secure BYOD Environments With End -to-end Management,” Slashdot
Comments are closed.