back to article BYOD for our own staff? That would be 'embarrassing' – HP exec

HP will not offer a BYOD programme internally, presumably because it can't take the ignominy of employees potentially turning up with shiny Apple kit: or devices from any other vendor for that matter. The US tech monster, which continues to stagger, has a raft of "BYOD solutions", including security and storage solutions, but …

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  1. Ancient Oracle funkie

    BYOD???

    At my last company (Morse) we weren't allowed to bring our own mugs! They had to be company branded.

  2. ElNumbre
    Meh

    Point

    I can see their point, but if they're not actively in a specific market, then why not.

    I wonder if this extends to the phones employees can use or (until 3 days time) the tablets they can use.

    I also wonder if they're doing anything around the 'Corporate Owned, Personally Enabled' which seems to be slowly emerging.

  3. Dan 55 Silver badge
    WTF?

    So that's a simple ban on BYOD then

    Given that WebOS devices were canned and WebOS has been spun off into a subsidiary which deals with nebulous cloudy softwarey things which don't do much unless you've actually got a device to run it on.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If their own products are so poor that employees will buy other brands despite a probable employee discount, then they're quite right to be embarassed about it.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Depends how you define BYOD

    I work for HP and whilst not supporting full BYOD (for the primary Laptop/Workstation), they do have an 'own device' WiFi network at most sites, and deploy software to manage those devices (encryption policies, remote erase, etc) and you can print to any corporate printer from these devices. Lots of staff in my office have their own tablets / smartphones hooked up to this system.

    So at least some of the 'raft of solutions' is deployed and in use....

    Anonymous for obvious reasons...

    1. keithpeter Silver badge
      Windows

      Re: Depends how you define BYOD

      DIY BYOD via RDP is what I'm posting this on now.

      I'm in the college building catching up over half term, and I'm using the unencrypted guest wifi to support a secure rdp session. So I have access to my work desktop as well as Ubuntu 12.10. They have disabled file transfer and USB on the server end, so work data stays on the servers. That is a bit clunky but I can see the reason for it.

      I can print, do Outlook and access Sharepoint from the rdp desktop. Fast wifi. Responsive desktop. All good.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ditch my kit then?

    I suppose as an HP employee I should ditch the Lenovo I use as my primary laptop and my staff should ditch their Macbooks bought for them? :)

    1. Captain Save-a-ho
      Headmaster

      Re: Ditch my kit then?

      Not unless you plan to use something other than HP. As a former EDSer, I was thoroughly disgusted when I had to trade in my Latitude D630 for a Elitebook 6930p. Not only was it heavier, it completely lacked a proper RS-232 serial port and the hard drive died within the first 3 months of using the thing.

      If HP employees don't want to use HP kit (and those that think for themselves in general don't), perhaps that's a reason to rethink what they produce. I'm sure customers feel the same way as the employees (of course they do!).

  7. Matt Bryant Silver badge
    Happy

    Security, security, security.

    In our company everything is driven by the most paranoid set of security rules going! We currently have a clause in our employment contract that expressly prohibits the copying of company data to non-company-owned devices. Effectively, we can be fired for copying work onto a non-company USB thumbdrive (which I think was one of the key drivers). We are not even supposed to read company email on non-company-owned devices, though there is a get-out where you can have a device approved for viewing the Web version of Outlook (the hoops you have to jump through to get this exclude most devices and home PCs). And "data storage devices" (e.g., iPods) are not allowed to be connected to company systems even for charging. We have a guest WiFi network available at some offices but that is completely separate from all corporate networks, and the internal networks are tiered with only low-security ones having WiFi with MAC-address checking as well as WPA2, which stops lusers trying to connect on their iPhones. This effectively (thankfully) kills any chance of BYOD being an issue (other than with the few directors that flout the rules because they can). Hopefully it will stay that way too!

    1. plrndl

      Re: Security, security, security.

      This is a classic example of why IT Depts are widely hated by users. The purpose of IT is to SERVE the user and the business process, NOT to make life easier for themselves or to worship the God technology and it's commandments. If IT is not serving the business it is as much of an enemy to the company as the competition and the taxman. What do you think the company pays you for? Have you EVER considered this?

      1. ManxPower

        Re: Security, security, security.

        One of the primary jobs of IT is to balance the business technology needs with the business information security needs. Sounds like you want to remove the information security part of that and have anarchy, where users connect anything they want to the corporate network. This. Does. Not. Work.

        Users don't care about security. If you expect them to care about security then you have already failed. The only way you will have a network which can be called "reasonably secure" is to not let users have anything to do with information security. You want to run your business network like the free wi-fi at the cafe.

      2. Matt Bryant Silver badge
        FAIL

        Re: Re: Security, security, security. @ plrndl

        ".....The purpose of IT is to SERVE the user and the business process....." Nope, it is to serve the business. For example, what is the business gain from letting an employee use iTunes on a work system? All it does is open an attack vector and chew up bandwidth that should have been used for company work.

    2. keithpeter Silver badge
      Windows

      Re: Security, security, security.

      *Effectively, we can be fired for copying work onto a non-company USB thumbdrive (which I think was one of the key drivers).*

      RDP onto locked down servers? Treat all clients as potentially owned? Switch off everything at the server (USB, file transfer, copy/paste in/out of the remote desktop)? No need to put data on sticks then. See my post a few above...

      1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
        Boffin

        Re: Security, security, security.

        ".....Switch off everything at the server....." Our ban extends to desktops and company phones as well. Apparently, one of our previous IT directors, when employed at another company, had an employee copy off their sales database onto an USB stick before leaving to work for a competitor. Our security policies are very much written from the "assume ever user is a threat" perspective.

    3. Mike Flex

      Re: Security, security, security.

      > In our company everything is driven by the most paranoid set of security rules going! [It] expressly prohibits the copying of company data to non-company-owned devices.

      Ah, so you still have working USB ports (for company-owned devices).

      Then there are organisations out there with stricter security rules than that.

      1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
        Happy

        Re: Security, security, security.

        "....Ah, so you still have working USB ports (for company-owned devices)....." Well, we did go through a fun few years were we superglued caps onto USB ports on desktops but that got a bit tiresome, and some staff would still gouge out the caps. Disabling USB in bios was also tried but had some nasty side-effects on some laptops models (e.g., disable USB, suddenly the SATA DVD drive stopped working!). And then we started getting only USB keyboards and mice, which meant users could pull one out and put in an USB hub to work round it. It also gave us a problem as we had people with laptops which were permitted to use BBs as modems via USB link cables. Eventually, the board just decided to make it a fireable offence and issue dire threats at regular periods. We have random searches by security which also deters users bringing in USB sticks. We do have some special desktops which are judged high-risk and have specific physical and software builds but I'm not telling on that! ;)

  8. James 100

    Is that an admission?

    Sounds like a tacit admission even their own staff wouldn't use their tat if they had a choice...

    Surely this policy also reduces the in-house knowledge base? It's the next logical step from "dog-fooding" (as Microsoft call it) - if their own internal user-base has a decent variety of equipment, it makes that form of testing much more effective. "Does this iThing work well with this new release of Exchange?" "Yes, we've been running it ourselves for the last year and 27 of our users have one of those, no problems" ... much better than "no idea, we only really support our own handsets with our servers", isn't it?

  9. plrndl

    If HP were smart (if only), they would encourage BYOD to help them discover the (real or perceived) weaknesses in their own products.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Detachable screen?

    I had that problem with an HP laptop, too.

  11. Peter Gordon

    if I worked at hp

    and they had a BYOD policy, I'd show up with my touchpad and Pre 3. That would probably be more embarrassing for them than competitors kit :)

    1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
      Boffin

      Re: if I worked at hp

      Many years ago I remember asking our hp enterprise salesgrunt why he had a Nokia phone instead of one of hp's own iPaqs. His answer was that it was all due to internal hp turfwars - the enterprise salesgrunts (and the presales, support techies and installation engineers) had their phones paid for out of team budgets. For them to all have hp iPaqs would require the team leader paying out more of the budget for phones, and seeing as the team leaders were targeted and bonused on REDUCING expenditure, they all went for cheap contract Nokias for their teams rather than doing their bit and helping raise visibility of hp's own smartphones. And the part of the company that was responsible for selling the smartphones didn't have the budget to give them out to other teams for free. In all, a bit of inflexible, beancounter-style management.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If I still worked for HP

    If I still worked for HP (which I don't) I'd quite happily show up with the 5 year old business class HPQ laptop I just bought (refurb) to replace the slightly older one which developed an intermittent motherboard fault after falling off a chair (laptop fell off, not me). And before that I had (and still have, somewhere ) CPQ Armada E-series business class stuff. All bought with my money, not theirs.

    Stuff I've heard about the current range does not inspire confidence, and certainly will not lead to purchase.

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