Unlike the old time in today's business computers and mobile devices are widely used instruments in the enterprise set up. According to Pillay, Diaki, Nham, Senanayake, Deshpande, and Tan (2013) quoted from (Gartner, 2013), Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is the “strategy that allows employees, business partners, and other users to use a personally selected and purchased client device to execute enterprise applications and access data”. Commonly used mobile devices for BYOD are laptops, tablets, and smartphones are some to mention. The definition of an enterprise can be found online ( CRM Definition, 2011), a business or a company with hundreds and thousands of employee. Having such a large number of employee and driving growth regarding the asset has the highest priority in the plan. Enterprises tend to research before implementing a new idea or guiding principles. One of longstanding arguing idea in the enterprise arena is the idea of bringing your own device in short BYOD. To fully understand the notion behind BYOD is wise to look into the challenges, and opportunities of BYOD in the enterprise technology environment will be the focus of this short essay.
The idea of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) did not come without some challenges. Enterprises have tried to weigh the problem to reduce the effect that comes after it. Based on the study of risks associated with BYOD Calder (2013) find out, one of the most critical risks is a loss of data due to devices being lost or stolen from or outside the workplace. The ease and convenience offered by the size of the smart devices make them easy to drop or misplace. With almost 2.4 billion units of smartphones and tablets sold in 2013 (Gartner 2013, cited in Pillay, Diaki, Nham, Senanayake, Deshpande, and Tan, 2013), these devices are becoming favorite targets for thieves because of their high value and compact size. The data hiding the mobile devices is likely to be of even greater worth than the item itself. Usually, in small device people store photos, necessary documentation, travel itinerary, location information, company information, and most importantly social media information including LinkedIn play significant role exposing the colossal amount of data cause harm. For the most part, the chance to get back small device compared to the larger device is very unlikely.
When BYOD started there was a lot of ambition from enterprise as a means of cost reduction as the key reason why many organisations have moved into a BYOD environment is because there are substantial cost savings in the decline of hardware investment (Pillay, Diaki, Nham, Senanayake, Deshpande, and Tan (2013), cited in, Wood, 2012). BYOD helps the organization to spend the investment costs of the device on the worker benefit and other incentive projects. Furthermore, employees have the interest to use their tools as they already familiarize themselves with their equipment for a while and eliminate the adaptation curve for new devices. In contrary with this study, there is a finding in European survey of BYOD. The investigation revealed that 67 percent of respondent thought BYOD would increase costs while 23 percent believed it would reduce costs (BYOD Survey, 2012). Enterprise organizations that work government contract project might not be interested in just saving money as their data has a higher value.
One of the fundamental points in BYOD, as stated by Antonio (2012), is to use techniques and abstraction mechanisms to deliver the applications to end users in an any-device style. Providing an application to any devices is a considerable challenge to those who manage the application delivery. A survey by ESG research Jon (2012) performed on 315 security professionals working into enterprise organizations (i.e., more than 1,000 employees) about their most difficult mobile security challenges, has pointed out the main problems that IT professionals have identified is 48% "enforcing security policies for mobile devices", and 46% "lost or stolen devices containing sensitive data" as a significant challenge. The sustainability of a given enterprise will always depend on managing its resource. In this twenty-first century, data take the enormous part of all available resources. Maintaining the security of resource will help to sustain the challenge and further open the growth of the enterprise company.
Each enterprise organization should have a responsible unit for overseeing and coordinating Information Security within and with any devices that have access to its internal resources and applications. I have experience working both in BYOD enterprise and also an enterprise that furnishes their own devices for the employee. The experience I have on the first one was good as it allows me to use my devices but the issue I was never asked to return any data that I saved in my devices. This is especially not worthy for a government organization as they own primary sensitive data. Data is an asset which, like other important business assets a has value and need to be protected. Whereas in BYOD set up on the first day I provided with a laptop and cell phone. The enterprise pays both for the phone and the computer. Whatever I worked and saved on the devices are part of the enterprise asset. To put in a nutshell as per so many challenges managing the devices and the security I prefer working with devices given by the enterprise. The idea of BYOD might bring a huge risk of data loss and management in today's world. Enterprise policies and data governance should focus on keeping company resource safe, and terms and conditions should be applied as employee use any resources.
Antonio, S (2012) New security perspectives around BYOD. [Online] Available at: https://ieeexplore-ieee-org.liverpool.idm.oclc.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6363095 [Accessed 04 Aug 2018]. BYOD Survey (2012). [Online] Available at: https://www.liebsoft.com/BYOD_survey/ [Accessed 03 Aug 2018]. Calder, Alan (2013) Is the BYOD Movement Worth the Risks?[Online] Available at: http://www.itgovernance.co.uk/download/ITG_CreditControl_March13.pdf [Accesed 2 Aug 2018] CRM Definition: What does “Enterprise” mean?[Online] Available at: https://www.lessannoyingcrm.com/resources/enterprise_software_definition [Accessed: 02 Aug 2018] Pillay, A., Diaki, H., Nham, E., Senanayake, S., Tan, G., & Deshpande, S. (2013). Does BYOD increase risks or drive benefits? Melbourne: The University of Melbourne. Jon, O (2012) A Multitude of Mobile Security Issues. [Online] Available at: https://www.esg-global.com/blog/a-multitude-of-mobile-security-issues [Accessed 04 Aug 2018].