BYOD is popular acronym and standard used in modern businesses to describe the practice of allowing employees to own their hardware and personal information but allowing businesses to control their intellectual property. Hence the acronym, BYOD or Bring Your Own Device. For most, this is the best of both worlds. It’s a win-win.
Organizations with large staff compliments tend to use their economies of scale to their advantage. In BYOD, this means they can supply their employees with all of their needed hardware, which in extreme cases would mean providing each of them with IT assets such as mobile phone, laptop, and tablets to execute tasks in a totally, homogenous environment.
The more common experience reported by both small business and enterprise, is for employees to purchase own and control their mobile devices that are used for personal and work use.
BYOD caught on for various reasons. The biggest one, is that it saves the business money. Further studies went on to show other advantages like boosted employee productivity as a result of implementing a BYOD policy.
Key BYOD Findings (US Data)
- 87% of companies rely on employees using their personal smartphones to access mobile business apps and services
- Almost 50% of businesses require their employees to use their personal smartphones
- Employees use their smartphones for work purposes outside of normal working hours about 7 hours per week
- About 70% of companies say that they reimburse their employees in some fashion for BYOD
- 29% of employees reported that they receive BYOD reimbursement for their data plan
BYOD is more than celebrating the agnostic nature of your network, where Apple, Windows and Android devices all play harmoniously together to keep your business and personal life humming. It is a full policy and framework to provide contingencies and recourse should things go awry. Why? Ever thought about what it would mean if an employee device were damaged, lost or stolen? Also, hackers, like parents, do NOT take a day off.
Key Considerations For Your BYOD Strategy
Employee privacy. In many cases the company may have access to everything on the employee’s device, even private information, depending on the type of mobile management the company has deployed.
Increased cyber-attacks: Personal devices represent “easy prey” to hackers because not only do they contain company data, but also personally identifiable information (PII) about the user.
Employee non-compliance: Keeping mobile devices updated with patches and operating system upgrades is imperative for security reasons, but it’s difficult to enforce this without some sort of MDM solution.
Physical loss or theft: The true cost of a lost mobile device goes far beyond the price of replacement, thanks to lost productivity, loss of intellectual property, data breaches and legal fees. It’s been estimated that the average loss to a company exceeds $49,000 per lost or stolen device! Implementing a BYOD policy to protect both the business and their employees is basically a requirement today. Don’t rely on informal conversations and assumptions.
BYOD should not exist without the following two important components:
- An MDM solution for managing devices connecting to company resources.
- A defined policy outlining acceptable use and responsibilities of BYOD participants.
Other layers to ensure robust cyber security protection organization-wide exist – however a BYOD policy is a rudimentary starting point. As always, reach out to us if you need assistance as you move from planning to implementation.
