Balancing Between the Risks and Advantages of BYOD

The concept of BYOD or Bring Your Own Device is getting popular with every coming day and as it is with every technology, many of its aspects are still unclear to business owners. Moreover, there are few unknown negatives associated with it as well. Despite this, the popularity is increasing immensely and there are no signs of slowing down as a research has revealed that by 2015, there will be 15 billion network connected devices. This is an amusing news but one thing that worries me is the negative side of BYOD culture. Will it overpower the benefits that this concept provides to business owners? To get the answer of this question, it is important to analyze the benefits and the shortcomings of this concept.

Benefits of BYOD

Of course, the numerous benefits of BYOD have made it a widely used concept across the globe. A strange trivia is that the concept of BYOD and the number of apps on smart phones is growing equally. Moreover, smart devices are quickly advancing and becoming smarter devices. All these and the following factors constitutes in popularising the BYOD culture.

1. BYOD allows employees to attend office from anywhere anytime thus making them more productive.

2. It allows employees to blend personal and professional life in a better way. This makes them happier employees.

3. Employees become more perceptive and self-supporting with their mobile devices. This reduces expenses of a company as they escape from maintaining a dedicated IT section.

4. Employees are able to work on the devices they are most comfortable with rather than killing their preference and work on bulky/slow corporate desktops.

Here are a few disadvantages of the BYOD concept.

1. Increasing number of mobile devices means more to the corporate security. At times, it becomes nearly impossible to tackle all of them.

2. Managing corporate data becomes a barbed task for companies. There are increased chances of data breach and security compromise.

3. The same condition further worsens when an employee leaves the company. The IT section faces a tough time in separating corporate data from personal data and deleting it.

4. The cost of implementing BYOD is very high, as it requires constant Internet connectivity all the time. Companies and employees will have to see whether they are able to manage increased mobile phone bills.

Now it is clear that we cannot enjoy only the pros of BYOD and cannot shun the cons totally. What we can do is to create a balance between the both, so that this culture works best for us. There are three crucial steps for this.

1. Establishing clear policies

2. Strengthening the security, and

3. Using cloud computing concept

Implementation of clear policies about using BYOD will reduce a great amount of confusion and nuisance. This is even realized by the federal government as it has instituted a toolkit to support federal agencies that are adopting BYOD programs. By implementing these policies, a business owner will let his employees know the limitations and guidelines of usage. They will give a kind of instruction manual to them to consult whenever there is any confusion arising.

By strengthening the security of the network, a business owner will minimize the risk of exposing confidential corporate data. It is because of raising concern about security of business phones that manufacturers like Apple, Samsung and Blackberry has dedicated security features in their phones. Similarly, the use of cloud can eliminate the risk of data leakage, when employees are using a USB stick or CDs to extract information.

Conclusion

The pros and cons of BYOD are equal and for business owners to use this concept wisely, it is important that they weigh them down and analyze them deeply. Based on the study, they should create a balance and make sure that they don’t overuse the benefits and don’t get over affected by the cons as well.