Slashdot Mirror
Should Employees Buy Their Own Computers?
Local ID10T writes
"Data security vs. productivity. We have all heard the arguments. Most of us use some of our personal equipment for work, but is it a good idea? 'You are at work. Your computer is five years old, runs Windows XP. Your company phone has a tiny screen and doesn't know what the internet is. Idling at home is a snazzy, super-fast laptop, and your own smartphone is barred from accessing work e-mail. There's a reason for that: IT provisioning is an expensive business. Companies can struggle to keep up with the constant rate of technological change. The devices employees have at home and in their pockets are often far more powerful than those provided for them. So what if you let your staff use their own equipment?' Companies such as Microsoft, Intel, Kraft, Citrix, and global law firm SNR Denton seem to think it's a decent idea."
Wouldn't work. The company would always care about its own security.
Agreed.
1. Security
a. If computers are coming and going without permission how do you know which are from employees and which are rogue systems
b. If computers are coming and going how do you ensure they aren't a threat for Virii or bots
i. At least with company sanctioned computers they should have virus scanners with updated definitions
2. Standardization
a. Whaawhaaa, my xxx isn't working properly; can you fix it: "I NEED IT RIGHT NOW"
i. Troubleshooting some hipsters 3D floating mouse with alpha drivers for Windows 7 is just a waste of time
b. Why can't my Windows 7 Home edition logon the domain, no one told me this when I bought it
Until director-level folks, CEO, CFO, other executives, and board members start demanding to use their iPads for things like e-mail and calendars.
About the only defense IT has is to say, "Fine, to do that we have to do a forklift upgrade of our mail/calendar infrastructure -- $xxx,xxx."
But when the CEO and CFO say, "do it," you do it.
Oh, and don't start on those weirdo creative types in marketing and documentation that bring in their own Macs anyway...
Some businesses, rather than going neurotic about access controls are instead asking, how do we enable employees to use the best tools for their jobs? Yeah, some can get away with XP on a Pentium box. Others want Linux and command lines. Others go for Macs. An iPad can be nearly deal for an exec that lives by e-mail and calendar and doesn't do a lot of content creation.
Figure out how to give people access to the tools that work -- for them
The rationale there is usually to make sure they take care of the tools. My brother owned a house painting business. In that industry the workers buy their own brushes. And it makes sense: when he supplied the brushes, they got trashed within a job or two ... leaving them out, not cleaning them properly, and so on. It was unsustainable. I think it even translated to the tools he did supply (paint sprayers, for example), where they took better care of those tools as well.
But I'm not sure this translates well to computers. I don't even trust my IT department to do the maintenance on my work computer properly. Having people maintain their own computers would be even worse.