Bring Your Own Device - There's No Longer a Line Between Personal and Work Devices

Today mobile devices are ubiquitous. Cell phones, smart phones, and tablets are everywhere. The average person has a smartphone, tablet, and laptop computer. That's three devices per person!

In my last job, I can remember when it was not uncommon to carry two cells phones. One was your work phone and the other was a personal phone. This was driven by the fact that companies wanted control of employee devices and data. Today, the lines between our personal lives and our work lives have blurred to the point that it is relatively difficult to tell where one begins and other ends.  Most of us own the phone we use for work and we also own the number and carry it with us from job to job and even from state to state.  It’s not at all uncommon for someone living in Minnesota to have a Colorado area code on their cell phone.

So, here we are in 2013 with hundreds of million devices and wireless connections.  Most of the devices are being used for both personal and business use as more and more employers give a device stipend or just ask that employees use their existing smartphone for things like corporate email rather then issue a company phone as a cost saving measure as well as employee demand.

It’s getting pretty complicated pretty quickly for businesses to deal with.  According to Smart Money Magazine  Every 3.5 seconds, someone in America loses a cell phone and there is a good likelihood that we will all lose more than one in our lifetime.

When a single device goes missing, personal information, private business data, business emails, and even credit card data and SSNs can be there for the taking and IT departments and small businesses alike need to ask themselves how to protect that important business data while still respecting employee privacy (These are their personal devices after all). Small and Medium sized businesses need to have a BYOD plan that protects their important data while respecting privacy.

Every business should be thinking about whether they can remotely wipe employee devices and whether their company data is secure.  Do all of your phones have password protection activated? If not, how can they force a policy that requires employees phones to lock?  Can the phones be locked remotely or can the data be wiped remotely if the phone is reported missing?

It has not taken us long to go from the closely managed mobility days to the BYOD days and it is unlikely we will be able to turn back the clock at this point.  Having a solid plan will set you up for success in protecting what’s most important to your business, your data.

nMail Hosted Exchange can help you to manage a BYOD workplace where employees can use their personal devices for business in a secure manner.