So you want to introduce a BYOD plan. Where do you start? Like it or not, BYOD (bring your own device) is here to stay. Being able to get your emails on your personal iPad and such is all very well but it comes with both a cost and a risk. Often the success or failure of a BYOD deployment is determined before the first machine is touched. BYOD comes in two distinct flavours: "I want …
...but I said no!
I bring my own device but have to give some dodge exchange server full wipe control over my stuff? No Way.
I'm still using it for work, using less convenient sideroads to get to the calendar and email, but unless they can come up with a clean separated use they will not get the rights they want on my phone.
A colleague added the corporate exchange server to his personal android phone. Something went wrong with it connecting to the server and it decided the device was stolen and wiped it to factory, even including the virtual SD card.. every app, every configuration setting, every photograph, every music file.. all gone!
It's not "It's all about control"
It's all about saving money, and toys for important people.
Now you get the same type that sell you anti-virus software trying to sell you MDM "solutions"
And you want to remote wipe MY device? I'm syncing everything to gmail so you will just piss me off when all my game hi-scores get wiped. If that sales guy is planning on taking all his contacts with him, they will be saved offline some place already.
that BYOD is only one leg of the tripod. To go with it you have hardware that is totally owed and controlled by the business (currently the norm) and also owned by the business with a personal area (the inverse of BYOD).
If you start offering BYOD you need to balance it with the other options too or you are letting the tail wag the dog.
If the company can dictate what websites I can and can not view, how I can and can not store data and when the device is or is not to be remotely wiped, this is not my device anymore, it is a company device that I happen to use. If BYOD means the company decides I ought to have a mobile device, gives me a budget to go out and chose the one I want, fine. If it is a phone or tablet that I have paid for with my own money, if they think I will fill it up with work related data and essentially hand over the keys to them, they can f*** right off.
Excellent point, and one made by our CIO to those clowns that tried to persuade the company into allowing BYOD for our employees (those clowns being the sales weasels). What helped crash that 'trial balloon' was the assistance by the company's lawyers in detailing potential legal hurdles (like an employees' device being subpoenaed due to litigation).
BYOD crashed harder than the Hindenberg. (For those of you too young to remember it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindenburg_disaster )
BYOD is fine for companies where their corporate data is worth less than a few hundred quid and it doesn't matter if a member of staff loses their device or simply resigns and takes it with them, and/or their staff are paid so badly a mobile phone, laptop or tablet is worth more than it costs to employ a staff member for a few weeks.
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