Dwelling into the Future of BYOD
Mobility as we all know is a rapidly evolving trend, while disruptive technologies are fundamentally changing the way we all work, throwing up new risks and challenges for corporates and employees. While the biggest change has come from smartphones and tablets which create possibilities for employees to connect to corporate data anytime anywhere, the line between work and pleasure is thus pushed to the edge, and has given increased importance to the Bring Your Own Device [BYOD] phenomenon.
Up until a couple of years ago, BYOD was just a dirty little secret within enterprises seen by IT as a threat to security. But with the IT led innovations driven towards Consumerization, BYOD has had and continues to gain wider acceptance within enterprises.
As we enter a new era where formulating digital strategies becomes top priority for CIOs, IT has realized that it is virtually impossible to ignore the drumbeat of BYOD, and is working towards how best to mitigate the risks and make it work.
Enterprises willing to innovate and forward think see BYOD as an opportunity for organizational effectiveness rather than just a syndrome to fight or avoid. Although most enterprises look at BYOD as cost-saving equipment with tangible short-term gains, it is also imperative that enterprises understand the opportunities BYOD creates and craft right strategies that deal with its challenges in most efficient way.
Organizations willing to embrace BYOD thus need to look at their business users and their contexts in order provide a mix of options to mitigate challenges with implementing BYOD.
Some of the key considerations to look at while implementing BYOD within organizations can be aligned on below strategies:
Establish the Objective
Having a clear objective can enable organizations set parameters and guidelines that will apply to mobile users and devices, and to craft a BYOD strategy that can go a long way in taking a sustainable position beyond short-term tangible gains.
Visualize the enterprise and its services
By visualizing its services, enterprises can harden the access from mobile devices to its backend systems and thus address the vulnerabilities due to untrusted access, unaltered operating systems, and threats due to data leaks and human errors.
Segregate personal and organizational intellectual property
Harness a framework that will enable IT to separate personal and corporate information on mobile device, and help them manage corporate information on the device without affecting personal information of employees. This will allow organizations to remove business application from an employee’s device without affecting his personal data when the employee leaves the organization. Couple of approaches in which this separation of information can be achieved is to keep the data entirely off the device, or by using a container approach such as MDM.
Create an outline of Responsibilities
One of the key challenges with BYOD is to prevent the mobile device from breaching the corporate code of conduct. Clearly outlining the risks and users’ responsibilities in protecting themselves and the organization against security breaches is essential. Have employees sign mobility policy and agree to use strong passwords, the use of mobile device management software, and, no jail breaking are some of the ways to mitigate this.
Framework for Lifecycle Support
Investing in creating a Technical Framework can help BYOD take a sustainable position within organizations. One of ways in which this can be achieved is by implementing MAM or MDM program within enterprises which help with organized management of mobile applications in the employee’s device.
BYOD can bring more benefits than risks to an organization. The key though is to balance the corporate and employee needs. A methodical approach in BYOD adoption can hence lead to happier and more productive employees within an organization.
