Problem-Solving with vITAD: Bridge the Digital Divide with Electronics Donations Programs
The Good: When in Rome
Mobility and an employees desire to utilize his or her personal device at work is not going anywhere. Companies who realize this and embrace BYOD are experiencing greater opportunities for efficiency and productivity. Not to mention, Gartner is starting to find real, tangible dollar savings for companies that have accepted BYOD for their employees.
Gartner analysts found IT departments can support nearly three times as many BYOD tablets than company-purchased tablets.
“IT leaders can spend half a million dollars to buy and support 1,000 enterprise-owned tablets, while they can support 2,745 user-owned tablets with that same budget,” said Federica Troni, research director at Gartner, in a statement.
The Bad: Employees want it…NOW!
When internal IT departments failed to meet demands for mobile devices and services, anxious employees began looking for outside providers. In fact, IT has been dragging this problem around for at least ten years, when people began bringing BlackBerry phones into the office. Employees soon grew tired of waiting for change, so they began to evade IT departments because that seemed faster than waiting for IT to provide substantial mobile services.
This ends the debate of who created BYOD.
It is the responsibility of IT departments to stay ahead of technological trends and react to impacts on data security and management processes long before they cascade into a problem. BYOD grew into an issue because IT failed to provide mobile capabilities soon enough.
Employees demand for even more mobility and high-speed access to information anytime, anywhere, is anticipated to drive wider adoption across all business sectors through 2015. The sooner companies acknowledge these desires; the sooner they can begin implementing proper security practices.
The Ugly: Will mobility meet security?
‘Work’ has become a sort of ‘frame of mind’ in today’s society. You can essentially work from anywhere at anytime with the help from mobile devices (whether they be personal or corporate issued).
In today’s work environment, 78 percent of companies say there are more than twice as many personal devices connecting to their corporate network now than compared to two years ago. Less than 10 percent of organizations are “fully aware” of the devices accessing their network.
The Company Worry
The main concern for enterprises is how to keep sensitive company data secure and monitored, while maintaining productivity in the workplace. Many personal devices already contain corporate data and are susceptible to hackers, data leaks and theft.
According to a recent survey by Gartner, a quarter of business users admitted to having had a security issue with their personal device in 2013, but only 27 percent of those respondents felt obliged to report it to their employer.
The Employee Worry
Employees, whose main concern is privacy, refuse to accept the strict, but necessary, policies. The fear is that their company can have control over the personal aspects of their device.
David Willis, chief of mobility research with research firm Gartner says “mobile device management in the corporate world is going to be as common as antivirus was for PCs. At a certain point, you won’t pass an audit if you don’t have these protections in place.”
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