Is BYOD on your company's agenda?

BYOD is the growing trend among employees to use their own IT resources – laptops, netbooks, smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices for work purposes, both in the office and while out and about or working from home.

Employers may mitigate some of the risk associated with BYOD by using a cloud-based virtualised model which ensures that no sensitive data sits on local platforms. No matter what device is used to access it, any work is stored in a server and only the virtualised application gets accessed from the mobile device. By doing this, data remains largely secure and this approach also ensures that data need never be stored on any easily misplaced local device, such as a laptop, CD or USB stick. As long as users have access to a dedicated mobile app or web browser, they can use company data and virtualised applications.

Managing Director of Qubic, communications and cloud computing specialist, Chris Papa comments: “While BYOD has proven to be popular with staff, has boosted productivity and increased job satisfaction where it has been adopted, there are certain issues that have to be addressed by organisations considering a BYOD approach. There are questions about ownership, security, data protection, as well as a need to ensure a clear BYOD policy is in place. It is understandable that many don’t want to tackle these issues, but they need to wake up to the reality that BYOD is coming whether they like it or not and sooner or later they are going to have to deal with it. Employees are using their own devices and bringing them into work regardless of their employers' views. Undecided employers will have to climb down off the fence and either prohibit BYOD for work completely, blocking access to their systems and their clients' data, or apply sufficient controls to protect their own and their clients’ data. The employer and employee must have a clear understanding of what is expected of them. Of paramount importance is ensuring that the benefits BYOD has to offer, do not compromise the security of the workplace.”

Several respondents to the survey reportedly went as far as to describe BYOD as ‘bring your own disaster’. But even these organisations are going to have take the issue on as their staff will undoubtedly start trying to access enterprise applications and data on their smartphones and tablets... if they haven’t already.