Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is a concept that is becoming increasingly popular within many businesses, it involves staff bringing personal devices to work, such as smartphones and tablet devices and using those devices to access company resources such as email, file servers, and databases.
The BYOD scheme would work within some businesses, depending on the type of data that is being used. When thinking about implementing this scheme businesses need think about, their data potentially being at risk. What is your company data worth? It is important that everyone in the organisation understands how important IT security is and should be educated on security risks. All employees should understand the rules that are in place.
So let’s take a look at some of the advantages and disadvantage of allowing your staff to use their own devices in your workplace:
Advantages
- No financial outlay in purchasing costly devices for your staff
- Staff often look after their own devices better than they do ones owned by the company
- Staff can decide which platform they wish to run on, iPhone/Blackberry/Android.
Disadvantages
- Due to having no control over the device this causes a security risk. Your IT Company won’t be able to lock down the device in order to introduce remote wipe and encryption facilities in the event of the device getting lost or stolen.
- If the device breaks down the staff member is responsible for replacing/repairing the device so this could put a delay on getting them back-up and running.