Say YES to BYOD!

IS ‘BRING YOUR OWN DEVICE’ JUST A TREND?

Everything has its antidote. That is the base of every change. Today we’re already well aware how much IT is rapidly and constantly evolving. To keep up with this fast pace of innovation, it`s needless to say how companies need to invest money, time and energy. Businesses need to increase productivity and enable their workers to have easy access to information, data, and files. All this while keeping their IT environment secure.

Meanwhile, employees increasingly want to use their own devices to access company applications data. This concept is widely known as BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) and was first introduced in 2009. But only in 2011, it started to become an emerging trend. Studies suggest this trend isn’t going anywhere. According to Markets and Markets the global market for BYOD will increase from $67.21 billion in 2011 to about $181.39 billion by the year 2017.(1)

Also referred to as IT consumerization, BYOD enables employees to work on the device they choose. The growth of devices such as tablets and smartphones has led many companies, such as here, at Awingu, to allow employees to bring their own devices to work. This policy brings many advantages, such as productivity gains and cost savings.

In return, this also pushes IT departments to continuously keep up with new technology available on the market. In recent years, this has become a complex ever growing challenge. However, more and more companies are now looking to incorporate or improve existing BYOD policies. According to Cisco, only 36% of enterprises provide full support for employee-owned devices.(2) In other words, 36% of enterprises claim to give support for any device (smartphone, tablet, laptop, etc.) the employee brings into the workplace.

But there is a bigger milestone to overcome when it comes to implementing BYOD and that is definitely security, a concern that threw a dark shadow over BYOD since its beginning.

TRUST ISSUES?

Today, almost 80 percent of all BYOD is facilitated in a completely unmanaged fashion, according to SecureEdge Networks(3). This use-case is typically limited to email and agenda access (e.g. POP3, IMAP) on tablets and smartphones. But even in its limited case, it’s clearly not a very secure way to run a business.

One of the classic ways to ensure employees will stay productive and not breach corporate policies is “Mobile Device Management” (MDM). MDM is typically used by an IT department to monitor, manage and secure employees’ mobile devices that are deployed across multiple mobile service providers and across multiple mobile operating systems being used in the organization. Often MDM is used on company-owned devices. Mobile device management software is often combined with additional security services and tools such as “Mobile Application Management” to create a complete mobile device and security solution, labeled as ” Enterprise Mobility Management” (EMM).(4)
Initially, MDM was primarily focused on ensuring basic security measures (typically on-device encryption and an adequate power-on password), and providing the ability to remotely wipe a managed device (e.g. if the employee left the organization or if it was lost or stolen). IT was adopted as a security solution by businesses.(5)
Although it seems like a great solution, MDM and EMM doesn`t cover everything which BYOD could/should be. Employees aren`t very fond of giving their employees control over their personal devices. Furthermore, application and data access usually are very limited: email, agenda, contact and maybe CRM…

PROS AND CONS
There are some key advantages to operating a BYOD strategy: increased employee satisfaction (flexible working), cost savings (reduced hardware spend, software licensing and device maintenance), productivity gains (employees are happier, more comfortable and often work faster with their own technology).

As Mark Coates, EMEA VP at Good Technology points out: “By enabling employees to securely and easily access corporate data on their own device, productivity levels will naturally increase. In terms of cost savings, there are huge benefits, since SMBs will not have to manage and fund a second device for employees.(6)

According to the statistics (7), security remains the biggest challenge in implementing BYOD:

The global BYOD security market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 31.95% between 2013 and 2018 (as reported by MarketResearchReports.biz)
35% of workers say they store their work passwords on their smartphone (according to SecureEdge Networks)
77% of employees have received no instruction in the risks of using their own devices at work (from AllThingsD)
It’s important to understand that there is no such thing as absolute security— there is a necessity of making information available to those who need it and keeping it secure. It is possible, however, to minimize BYOD risks by verifying the integrity of individual users, setting organizational policies, and monitoring actual mobile usage and data access.(8)

WANT TO START IMPLEMENTING OR IMPROVE YOUR BYOD POLICY?

It’s time to stop worrying about the security of your data. Awingu enables an easy and secure way to setup true BYOD. It can co-exist with existing MDM solutions, even if Awingu can be setup without MDM most of the time.

With Awingu it doesn’t matter if you depend on legacy applications, SaaS services or both. Awingu aggregates all company applications and files into one secure online workspace. This way your employees can work from any device of their choice, via a browser.

BYOD doesn`t need to be a complicated process, that is why Awingu covers all main pain points and lets you and your workers enjoy the simple workspace management.

Avoid turning only to ‘EMM’ solutions. Don’t limit BYOD to managed devices. Don’t limit BYOD to email & agenda. With Awingu, you can break those barriers without stress about the loss of company data.

How Awingu helps you to keep control over BYOD:

1. Secure login: Use Multi-Factor Authentication to securely login into your Awingu workspace
2. No local data: Awingu runs inside the secured sandbox of your browser.
3. Compliance: Awingu enables granular control so the admin control who gets access to what data, who can down/upload data, who can print documents, etc.
4. Audit: Full usage audit is available out-of-the-box
5. User-friendly: pick-up any device, login and start working
6. Any applications: Awingu provides access to legacy & SaaS apps inside the browser. For legacy applications, it acts as an “HTML5 gateway”

… and many other features you can find out in your 14-day free trial!

Sources:

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/PressReleases/byod.asp
https://newsroom.cisco.com/press-release-content?articleId=854754
http://www.securedgenetworks.com/blog/topic/strategy
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/M/mobile_device_management.html
http://searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com/ehandbook/BYOD-policies-should-balance-user-needs-and-mobile-security
http://www.techradar.com/news/computing/what-is-byod-and-why-is-it-important-1175088
http://www.ingrammicroadvisor.com/data-center/23-byod-statistics-you-should-be-familiar-with
http://searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com/ehandbook/Enterprise-mobility-management-envelops-data-as-well-as-devices