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With the rise of mobile device and smartphones usage, more and more employees are bringing their own device(s) to work and linking them up to the organisation’s network; be it their work email or accessing confidential company information via specialised apps.
We had an opportunity to pick the brain of Stanley Li, CEO of Netswitch prior to the upcoming BYOD:2012 who explains how this phenomenon can be managed.
What are the greatest benefits of implementing a BYOD program?
There are 3 perspectives from which to address this: From a corporate point of view, there is a definite correlation between BYOD and cost-savings / employee satisfaction. End-users experience a sense of ownership and flexibility. And, BYOD provides IT vendors with a prefect opportunity to bridge the gap between corporate and end-users for IT solutions.
What are the greatest obstacles to developing and managing a BYOD policy?
The greatest challenge is working with and educating corporate management on BYOD security – many security issues around BYOD can be difficult to overcome, both technically and from a procedural point of view, so corporate management is reluctant to roll BYOD out. Also, it can be challenging to help corporate management understand that BYOD will pay for itself after the initially required infrastructural costs are covered.
How is the rest of the world responding to the BYOD challenge?
In countries where corporate litigation is less invasive, companies are having an easier time justifying the roll-out of BYOD and in many cases have skipped a generation of desktop communication devices in favor of smartphones and smart devices. In many countries, the security trade-offs vis-a-vis privacy concerns favor BYOD roll-outs because companies can be more restrictive about personal use. Mobile device deployment, when uninhibited by regulatory issues, is dramatically more cost effective, efficient, and convenient.
What can Australia learn from China about how we manage BYOD?
China is a large country and has realized the benefits of the wireless roll-out of mobile devices because they also are unencumbered by the privacy issues and resulting litigation that plague most western countries.
Stanley Li will be speaking on BYOD architecture and responding to global demands at the upcoming BYOD:2012 conference in December in Sydney.