Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) might be a cool idea both for employees and companies, but security remains a top concern. The concern is increasing with the rapid proliferation of consumer mobile devices, changing the traditional IT environment in enterprises, with 90% of enterprises having deployed mobile devices, with smartphones being most widely deployed, according to a survey by Gartner. Eighty-six percent of enterprises surveyed said that they plan to deploy media tablets this year.
Respondents came from organizations with 500 or more employees and an in-house data center in the US, UK, Germany, Australia, Brazil, Russia, India and China and Japan. The survey was conducted in October through November of 2011.
The survey centered on the deployment status of, and plans for mobile device adoption; bring your own device (BYOD) policy and investment in data centers and adopting technology drivers, including hosted virtual desktop (HVD) for enterprise mobility.
"Healthy growth in smartphone and media tablet shipments over the next five years will enable a much higher level of IT consumerization than is currently possible," said Chae-Gi Lee, research director at Gartner, in a release. "Enterprises should recognize this and look to 'mobile enable' their IT infrastructure for employees to meet the growing demand for mobile device use in the enterprise IT environment."
A further impact of consumerization is the proliferation of BYOD in enterprises. Gartner's survey found that many enterprises are allowing personal mobile devices to connect to the enterprise network.
BYOD demand was higher in the BRIC countries where more Gen Y employees are working. With the proliferation of BYOD, there are security issues for enterprises to consider before they invest in mobile computing. According to the survey, the top issues were 'use of privately owned devices' and 'deployment of new enterprise mobile platforms'.
Enterprises should focus on mobile data protection ( MDP), network access control ( NAC), andmobile device management (MDM) tools to support their BYOD and new enterprise mobile platform efforts. These technology factors are essential to establish a standard mobile platform for enterprises.
Many enterprises surveyed indicated that they provide technical support for personal devices - 32% of smartphones, 37% of tablets and 44% of laptops. However, the results around technical support varied significantly between regions, with 28% of respondents in non-BRIC countries receiving technical support for connecting personal devices versus 44% in BRIC countries.
"Mature countries consider BYOD programmes as bringing with them both legal and technical issues, whereas emerging countries only see technical issues. For instance, mature regions are more concerned with security and data privacy regulations for immature MDM than emerging regions," Mr Lee said.
In BRIC countries, employee turnover can be high in some sectors, leading to more theft of devices and data. BYOD and virtualization can reduce those enterprise losses. There are definitely plenty of gains in BYOD and the quicker companies get around security issues, the better it will be.
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