back to article BYOD: The great small biz security headache

After surveying more than 1600 IT professionals late last year, the analyst firm Freeform Dynamics concluded that the consumerisation of IT is a real thing, and it is not just down to those pesky young people and their shiny iPads. Company founder Dale Vile says the trend is driven not just by the so-called digital natives, …

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  1. Anomynous Coward

    The great small ad headache

    There's some truth in all this but it feels a lot like a set of "use my company" notices.

  2. h4rm0ny

    Windows 8

    Windows 8 is bringing quite a few new things in to help streamline BYOD which are seriously interesting. MS are certainly expecting BYOD to take off in a major way. You can have programs installed in a domain specific way so that, if you're in the company network or connected to the right VPN, the program is available and if you're not, it ain't. Good for company specific software.

    There's a big article on BYOD with Win8 here which is well worth reading if you're interested in that sort of stuff.

  3. RainForestGuppy

    Spouting Rubbish

    "One way of dealing with the security threat, Gower argues, is to go into the cloud. “If you’re cloud based, you can access data locally, but the data is held centrally, so when you log off, the data goes too.” "

    Only if the app does that. If you move, dump, save or view the content locally it's more than likely still on the device when you disconnect.

    A classic example of a reseller not understand the product.

    1. Dom 1

      Re: Spouting Rubbish

      Also, the comment does not take into account what type of data is stored in the cloud. Certain types of data (for example medical or children's information) cannot be stored in the cloud, as cloud providers will not take responsability for loss of data by hardware failure/hacking.

      In other words, if your data is sensitive - you can't store it in the cloud, but if you do, you are still responsible even if you pay someone else to store it (so what's the point?).

  4. Arctic fox
    Flame

    "...the seniority to override rules and use them at work if they want to."

    "These people are a double threat to security. They are senior enough that saying “No” to them is a difficult option, but they are also likely to have access to just the kind of data you most want to protect: confidential sales projections, business strategy or sensitive IP, perhaps."

    Arrogant, ignorant shits. That's all.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "...the seniority to override rules and use them at work if they want to."

      And it's not a new phenomon either. I worked for a large company in the early 90s and they always got what they wanted. If it wasn't on the approved list (and not able to be had via the purchasing dept.) they'd put it on their corporate credit card and then have IT install and support it.

      When you're fighting someone who makes your yearly salary in a month, it is difficult and usually futile.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Physical safety

    What no-one seems to take into account is the physical safety of hardware supplied by employees. Is it PAT tested? (A legal requirement) Will that dodgy mains cable which is damaged or badly fixed going to electrocute someone? Has the device had its standard battery replaced with a knock-off cheapo one from some dodgy internet site, which may go on fire? How does your insurance company see allowing employees to supply their own hardware?

    I would say that these issues are at least as important, but seem to go un-mentioned.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I used to work at the University of East Anglia, and as you can imagine the student population have all manner of odd devices. In my experience I can honestly say that the only issues we came across were as follows

    1. grey market goods from Asia - fake macs and fake androids

    2. too many operating systems to right help sheets for

    3. no antivirus and a HDD full of malware

    4. Some of the filthiest laptops I have ever touched - touchscreens as well

    The actual enforcing of email security and domain security was very easy.

    1. h4rm0ny

      "The actual enforcing of email security and domain security was very easy."

      Well with an attitude like that no wonder all the emails from your Climate Research Unit ended up in Russia. I bet Professor Phil Jones is glad that email security was so easy. ;)

  7. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Complete waste of space

    Apart from advertising the company involved.

    Not that it does much to recommend them. "Consumerisation of IT" a real thing, eh? Well, if it is, rather than being a pathetic piece of jargon cooked up by by these people, it happened decades ago --- When the balance changed from IT departments deciding what happened on the workers' desktops, to the workers themselves demanding ...Windows.

    "analyst firm Freeform Dynamics" ... fail.

    And Register, fail, for printing this stuff.

  8. James 100

    As it should be

    'I worked for a large company in the early 90s and they always got what they wanted. If it wasn't on the approved list (and not able to be had via the purchasing dept.) they'd put it on their corporate credit card and then have IT install and support it.'

    That sounds about right: within reason, the function of the IT department should be to support what the clients need, not to dictate what the clients get. If the head of one of our law schools wants a slimline ultrabook and an engineering prof wants a multi-Xeon monster to do his CAD on, so be it: IMO, forcing them to have something "standard" to make our own jobs easier at their expense would be a dereliction of duty and detrimental to the organisation as a whole.

    OK, Sony Vaios need to be purged from the face of the planet, and I'm not exactly suggesting deploying Angry Birds through central provisioning servers, but I've seen far too much dictatorial "standard" imposition lately, often for little more than the sake of a power-trip by those imposing them. I'm reminded sometimes of tales of American Home Owners Associations which dictate the colour of your front door to suit their whims...

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