BYOD Woes

Considering implementing BYOD? Have people under 30 working for you? Then you better be aware of the findings in a recent survey from TrackVia (http://recode.net/2014/07/20/got-a-byod-problem-blame-the-millennials-you-just-hired/). This company, which designs custom apps for corporate clients, says that millennials (adults aged 18 to 33, per the Pew Research Foundation) are the most likely to push for BYOD technology in the office.

However, BYOD by itself is not really the issue. In fact, a recent Gartner survey, suggested that more than half of companies will soon require their employees to bring their own phone or computer to work . The issue is that BYOD tends to be a privacy and security challenge for IT and corporate security departments when employees use Web and phone apps with company data.  This may well violate corporate policies.

The survey noted that “70 percent of millennials admit to breaking corporate rules around using outside apps”, whereas 69 percent of older workers said they don’t break the rules. What’s particularly interesting about millennials’ disdain for IT policies is that many of the newer cloud software services actually rely on them to break company rules.

​BYOD has many benefits for both employees and employers. However, implementing BYOD has potential security and privacy risks that must be addressed by an organization.