Every once in a while, some technological innovation or application comes along that drastically changes things for the business sector. The effects are felt in all industries, from in-office environments to fleet management done primarily on the road. The mobile device revolution – which has ushered in tablets, smartphones and ultrabooks – has significantly digitized the working environment.
Today, many companies have bought into the utility of establishing a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) culture in the workplace, which has had reverberations through popular platforms like Microsoft SharePoint, the cloud server-based Office365, SharePoint Online and other enterprise software solutions.
Just How Popular is BYOD These Days?
It turns out these numbers are tied to the number of businesses running enterprise software solutions. For example, Microsoft registers tens-of-thousands of SharePoint users daily, with a total of well over a hundred million licenses out there. Over half of these registered users run the program on their personal laptops and other mobile devices – which are usually more robust than the ones a company would be willing to provide. Throw in the personalized settings and round-the-clock access, and the growing trend of BYOD inclusion in the workplace (up five percent in just a year’s time) is predicted to explode even more.
Issues Facing BYOD
As you can imagine, despite the many advantages of BYOD, there are some inherent problems; particularly security. If your employees use their own devices, there needs to be company security protocols and restrictions involved. The computer era has ushered in many cyber-threats; all of which are especially dangerous for open-network devices.
Even if your business isn’t hit by the massive threats that breached Target and tried to take out Sony, the threat of malware being introduced to your network is more significant than ever before – especially if you have a centralized IT infrastructure and haven’t invested in business continuity protocols for disaster recovery. The good news is that there are a number of security methods you can implement:
- When using SharePoint Online or other enterprise software solutions, there should be restrictions in place for how company-related documents are sent out. SharePoint facilitates accountability with certain options in its security settings.
- Take steps to limit the possibility of jail-broken devices, which is when an employee or other party hacks the mobile device so that unauthorized applications can be downloaded – many of which contain malware and viruses. One of the best ways to combat this threat is also one of the simplest: education. Most employees simply don’t understand the inherent security threat of jail-breaking, especially for such a trivial benefit of game-playing, etc.
- Authenticate actions on your network across the board. Whether you’re using the built-in security settings of Microsoft SharePoint 2013 for authentication, or a whole-system substitute, this is a must. It also records which device is being used to access the information, which makes it significantly easier to catch the source of a threat and understand why it happened.
Ultimately, the BYOD revolution has far more benefits than not, and companies hoping to stay competitive would do well to be swept up in it. The reasons to incorporate it easily outweigh the converse, especially with the ability to remotely wipe devices that have been compromised or that repeatedly violate the established authorization protocols.
With so many enterprise software solutions dependent on inter-office communications, BYOD is the perfect complement to raising the efficiency and productivity of your office.