While everybody is talking about a growing adoption of Bring Your Own Device, president Trump has shown the world through his own example how this policy is very much a part of today`s reality.
There has been a lot of fuss on how he is still using his personal android device and all the potential security risks this brings along. Android Central speculates it’s a Samsung Galaxy S3, which came out in 2012 and Google hasn’t updated since 2015. “Mobile security experts agree that Trump’s Android phone poses a major security risk.” writes TechTarget. (1)
The revelation has some Beltway watchers worried. “A Galaxy S3 does not meet the security requirements of the average teenager, let alone the purported leader of the free world,” observed Nicholas Weaver, a security expert at the non-profit International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, California, in a post on the policy blog Lawfare. Hacking that gadget is “the type of project I would assign as homework for my advanced undergraduate classes,” he said. (2)
We obviously don’t know which are facts and not. What we do know is that using personal devices in a professional context has grown significantly over the past years. According to Markets and Markets the global market for Bring Your Own Device will increase from 2011 to 2017 an immense 170%.(3)
In reality, BYOD involves every type of device type, from iPad’s to Chromebooks, and not just smartphones. A Gartner study from 2014 shows that 40% of employees in large enterprises use personal devices for work. “The lines between work and play are becoming more and more blurred as employees choose to ‘use their own device’ for work purposes whether sanctioned by an employer or not,” said Amanda Sabia, principal research analyst at Gartner. The same study also suggests roughly 40% of all BYOD is done without the knowledge or approval of the company IT department. (4)
Does President Trump`s use-case fall in the last 40% or not we obviously don’t know. But the fact stays this group of shadow users is a growing reality. Businesses need to setup tools and policies to guarantee security and data confidentiality. Especially on unmanaged devices.
What we know for sure, is that with Awingu, BYOD can be adopted in a very secure way. And not just on a phone, but especially on personal tablets, laptops etc. No local data resides on the device, a secure connection between the device and the data center, a secured ‘multi-factor authentication’ to login, etc. Find out all the possibilities and get your free trial today!
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