IT GRC Forum

One fourth of all global information workers use their own devices at home and at work for work purposes. A recent survey report, commissioned by Unisys and conducted by Forrester Consulting, involved 2,600 IT workers and 590 business and their IT executives.

An employee may pay for their device and its monthly plan, but employees who use their personal devices at work should be required to adhere to a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy that sets the ground rules. If you choose to use your personal device for work purposes at any time for any reason, then your employer will more than likely want control over that device. This means like in a company mobile liability policy, the employer may have remote capabilities to monitor activity and in the event of loss or employee termination, wipe the data.

Many employees have come to expect that they should be able to use personal smartphones and other mobile devices at the office. This creates problems for IT managers. A company’s IT staff may have a solid grasp on company-issued laptops, desktops, and even mobile phones, but it is almost impossible to control the results when employees begin connecting various types of personal devices to the company’s network. When you get that brand new Droid, load it up with apps, and then plug it into your work PC in order to update or sync necessary files, your company’s IT guy has to worry about whether that last app you downloaded might infect the entire network.