BYOD Office Environment

What is BYOD?

BYOD is the acronym for Bring Your Own Device trend in the workplace. It

indeed has become a trend for employees to bring their personal devices-

laptops, tablets, smartphones, USB drives to the office, and use them to

connect to the office’s server. Employees can use their own devices to access

work systems, confidential or sensitive data.

Many companies have adopted the work from home culture for convenience,

flexibility. Also, to be in touch with their employees at all hours. With personal

devices, employees can log in during commute or whenever needed.

But is it safe?

There are some dangers associated with BYOD culture too. IT departments

aren't always aware or up to date on what technology their employees are using

to work. While the IT departments used to be solely responsible for a company’s

technology, Now, they are left playing catch up as employees use their own

different devices for work. IT consultants are familiar with the advantages of

allowing employees to bring their devices to work—and how to secure the

devices to prevent security issues from occurring. Some companies may allow

BYOD, while some others consider it to be a part of shadow IT. It refers to

software or hardware that is not supported by IT.

BYOD security is a concern for organizational leaders because even

unsanctioned personal devices enter the workplace. It opens up the possibility

of data breaches and security threats. There are proofs that BYOD culture can

improve employee productivity and morale. If left unaddressed by IT, personal

devices accessing an organization’s network can present serious security

challenges.

Advantages of BYOD

Companies that have BYOD policies have some major advantages on their side

over their competitors. The first and obvious one is cost-cutting. BYOD policies

shift the company costs to the user or employee as all the workers want to be

able to use the latest devices in the workplace. That means the company

covered costs now can be covered by the workers. The company can count on

the employee to pay for nearly all of the costs of their device. It can save a

business a lot of money, as much as $80 per employee per month. Most of the

time, employees are already using that device for personal use and don’t have a

problem to continue paying for it out of their pocket.

Disadvantages of BYOD

BYOD comes with its disadvantages too. Companies that opt for this policy;

often lose a sense of control over their IT department. The company-issued

technology comes with a standard acceptable use policy, but that is hard to

achieve with the BYOD system. It can be challenging to implement an

acceptable-policy for an employee who is using their device. Compliance is

another problem. Compliance rules apply even if the information is on a

personal device owned by an employee. Companies need to implement a policy

that can monitor how and when corporate can retrieve data from personal

devices.