Joe Lipscombe discusses the trend which is steam rolling its way through enterprise – BYOD
I am very fortunate in my job that I am able to report on a very fast-paced industry in an ever expanding region. Hardly a day goes by when I’m not zipping around the city trying to cover the many happenings at any given moment. In such a job, I can quickly gather what the main industry concerns and interests are and this month has been no different.
Everybody is talking about BYOD, or as I like to call it – Burying Your Out-of-control Dementia, because apparently it makes you forget when you’re at work, on holiday, on the toilet and when you’re supposed to be asleep. This is the 21st century, a time in which we have to cram every element of our life into one small device and balance it day to day.
Once, my father and I reached the peak of a large hill (or small mountain, as I prefer). He took out his mobile device and pointed it towards me. I, revelling in my triumph, raised my hands to the sky in static celebration, grinning like a benign toddler at feeding time. After about 55 seconds I dropped my aching limbs and called out “have you taken it yet?” “Sorry?” my father says back. “Have you taken the photo yet?” I ask again. “Oh, no, I’m just sending an email,” he replies.
It has drawn split opinions in industry (BYOD, not my father), but most agree it is not just a fad and that implementing strategies which incorporate it is a must do for business. This has been laid out in Solutions World earlier in this issue.
However, I have a fear of BYOD. Statistics show that thanks to mobility and BYOD, employees are now working on average 20 extra unpaid hours a week. In actual fact I have a fear of work and this is now just a subsidiary of sorts. The concern is that introducing your personal devices into the work environment decreases your chances of having a clear divide between the two. Personal becomes professional.
Recently, at a roundtable, I was talking mobile strategies and I was told a story which stuck with me. An employee travelling abroad on vacation had taken his device with him. The employee admitted to wanting to keep track of his work alerts and said he would respond accordingly if necessary.
Firstly, this drastically reduced the quality of his holiday, not to mention the chap on a sun lounger next to him dousing himself with sun lotion and having to hear the man complaining down the phone about Greg’s inability to create a Facebook page for an upcoming event (Greg was born in the 70’s(Greg isn’t real)).
Secondly, it meant that sensitive data was being accessed half way around the world. For this reason, in an attempt to secure the data, he put a password on the device. If the password was entered incorrectly three times the device would lock and all the information would be completely erased.
Needless to say, once his young daughter got a hold of the device to play with, his data was erased within seconds. Therefore, he couldn’t access any of his work for the entire period of his vacation and his employer had to find adequate resources to cover his loss of manpower, not to mention panic over the loss of data. This all stemmed from the integration of professional and personal devices (and the addictive Angry Birds).
Although I recognise the positives, personally my issue with BYOD is that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to separate yourself from your work – the implications of which can be devilish for your home life. Also, as mentioned, it opens up security issues for your company. Devising and deploying a data management plan will be timely, costly and difficult for your IT department, but with BYOD looking like the trend with no end, businesses must look to get started immediately or face very real and complicated risks.
