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Is Your Network Ready for BYOD

Well, the world has certainly changed. If we weren’t moving quickly enough to an office-less, location-agnostic world for much of the workforce, the pandemic flipped the switch completely. Companies and their technology organizations are scrambling to equip their people to remain productive while also endeavoring to keep their networks secure.

Complicating matters is the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) movement, which is bigger than simply answering work emails and texts on our smartphones. BYOD means doing substantive work on personal, portable devices. Here are some interesting stats relevant to the BYOD market:

The BYOD market is on course to grow from $30 billion in 2014 to just over $365 billion by 2022. (Source: BetaNews).

61% of Gen Y and 50% of 30+ workers believe the tech tools they use in their personal lives are more effective and productive than those used in their work life (Dell)

60% use a smartphone for work purposes while 31% desire one (Dell)

Companies favoring BYOD save $350 per year, per employee (Cisco)

Using portable devices for work tasks saves employees 58 minutes per day while increasing productivity by 34% (Frost & Sullivan)

Advantages driving this shift are cost savings for organizations, quicker onboarding, enabling flexible work and growing

evidence that employees work faster when using their own technology. Mobile devices have become very personal and, given the choice, most employees would prefer their own device to learning a new one and juggling personal and professional hardware.

The impact is being felt across IT organizations from help desk to mobile app development to security and compliance. Some of the risks are:

Data leakage and data theft, which can lead to potential legal issues

Shadow IT and sketchy apps – e.g., TikTok

Malware and device infection

Mixing personal and business use

Inability to control devices – device loss, device theft, former employees

This consumerization of IT has forever altered the mode of operation for many (most?) IT departments. To address this, new job positions are being created to handle the opportunities and challenges presented by this new reality. Enterprise Architects are focusing on fragmented employee and fragmented technology structures. Cloud and local storage systems are merging into hybrid cloud structures. Mobility Managers are going beyond setting up devices for users and are now educating and training users, creating mobile solutions for business processes, recommending apps and managing mobile device costs. User Experience Designers manage the interactions between a user and a virtual or physical system in ways that meet the user’s needs while meeting system requirements.

Whatever the current dynamics of your organization’s current BYOD dynamic, odds are that they are destined to change. BYOD can be a powerful enabler or a hand grenade for your organization. Tools are important, but only one part of the solution. It’s critical to evaluate the types of roles in your IT organization and to what extent – if any – they protect your business from the risks posed by BYOD. Additionally, how smart, creative and savvy is the talent in your IT organization? Because the bad guys who make the headlines are some of the smartest, most creative and savviest techies in the world. People matter, and talent wins.

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