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"When mobile devices entered the world\u2014first laptops, then early smartphones like the BlackBerry\u2014the IT departments of large companies were the first to adopt them. Today, consumers drive adoption, purchasing cutting-edge technology on their own dime for their own use, forcing their companies to react to the reality that their employees often have better technology at their disposal at home than they do at work.\nAt first, IT departments did what you&amp;#8217;d expect: refuse the sudden influx of personal devices in the workplace, often for very good reasons like security. But it&amp;#8217;s a losing battle for many organizations, particularly those whose employees aren&amp;#8217;t handling state secrets or financial results. The answer: &amp;#8220;Bring your own device&amp;#8221; programs that allow people to use their personal devices at work\u2014provided they agree to some restrictions.\nThough BYOD programs were instituted to ease tensions between employees and their companies, it turns out there&amp;#8217;s still plenty to go around, particularly when it comes to security and privacy. Almost half of American workers said they would stop using their personal devices for business if their employer required them to install a specified security app, according to a July report from Harris Interactive, a market research firm, and Webroot, a cyber security company. Worries included employer access to personal data, the wiping of personal data in the event that a device is lost or compromised, the tracking of one&amp;#8217;s location, and reduced performance due to the additional software running in the background.\n\u201CWe discovered that BYOD\u2014while it is a technology issue\u2014it is also a communication issue that needs to be addressed,\u201D said Mike Malloy, executive vice president of products and strategy at Webroot. \u201CThere\u2019s a big disconnect between employees and IT in this matter.\u201D\nSome of these concerns are justified. Two-fifths of the U.S. IT professionals in the Webroot survey admitted they are only \u201Csomewhat\u201D confident they could remove the security software on an employee&amp;#8217;s personal device without wiping personal data or barring the owner&amp;#8217;s access to it. It should come as no surprise then that fewer than one in five U.S. employees have a full security application installed on their personal device.\n\u201CThe traditional viewpoint of IT departments is that they manage the devices they provide and have full control of and responsibility for them,\u201D said Patrick Kennedy, a Webroot marketing executive who served as one of the leads on the report&amp;#8217;s research. \u201CBYOD has changed that and has forced IT departments to change way they think and the way they engage with employees. Suddenly they\u2019re faced with a significant number of devices and can\u2019t mandate everything that happens or is allowed to happen on that device.\u201D\nThere is still plenty of good reason for companies to embrace BYOD. For the most part, corporations are happy to shunt hardware costs onto their employees, and the potential boost in productivity from enabling employees to work remotely and during off-hours also appeals.\nBut each additional external device connecting to a corporate network presents another possible point of failure\u2014one more entryway for hackers, malware, and breaches. \u201CSome of the major breaches that have happened over the last couple years originated on end points, whether on PC or mobile,\u201D Malloy said. \u201CIt started with a piece of malware on an end point, and led to a great deal of exposure of the corporate network.\u201D\nReferring to security apps on personal devices, Malloy added: \u201CIf an employer doesn\u2019t mandate it, it\u2019s highly likely that that device is going to be vulnerable.\u201D\nAs it turns out, employees are a fairly brazen bunch. The majority of them rely only on the security features that come preinstalled on their devices\u2014think PINs to unlock and the like. Beyond that: nada.\nWhich is why most companies surveyed admitted that the opinion of employees with regard to the corporate security software installed on their personal devices has little or no influence on their decisions, even as three quarters of employees believe they should have some say.\n&amp;#8220;Bring your own device,&amp;#8221; it turns out, is a bit of a misnomer in practice. So much for &amp;#8220;own.&amp;#8221;\n\u201CIT shouldn\u2019t just give lip service,\u201D Malloy said. \u201CThey need to talk to employees about it and seek out solutions.\u201D And if they don&amp;#8217;t? &amp;#8220;You\u2019re going to end up with a showdown that isn\u2019t going to help anybody.&amp;#8221;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://fortune.com/2014/07/24/bring-your-own-device-byod-enterprise-showdown/>