BYOD: Putting a Lid on Pandora's Box

Over the past several years, one of the most important trends to impact organizations of all sizes - but particularly mid-sized and large organizations - is for employees to use their own smartphones and tablets in the course of their work. The so-called Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend was initiated several years ago, often by senior executives who had purchased an Apple iPhone or an Android device and then requested their IT department to support it instead of, or in addition to, the mobile device that the company had supplied to them. Osterman Research includes as a key element of the BYOD trend the various applications that employees use as part of their work, such as personal file sync services.

One of the fundamental dangers of BYOD is that personally owned and managed devices that are used to create, access and store corporate data will typically bypass inbound content filtering systems that have been deployed by IT.

It is critically important that organizations faced with the BYOD problem implement policies about acceptable use of devices and applications, perhaps creating a list of approved devices, operating systems, applications and other personally owned or managed solutions.