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Sorry, IT: These 5 Technologies Belong To Users
GMGruman writes "The BYOD (bring your own device) phenomenon hasn't been easy on IT, which has seen its control slip. But for these five technologies — mobile devices, cloud computing services, social technology, exploratory analytics, and specialty apps — it has already slipped, and Forrester and others argue IT needs to let go of them. That also means not investing time and money in all the management apps that vendors are happy to sell to IT shops afraid of BYOD — as this post shows, many just won't deliver what IT hopes."
The biggest security threat from a BYOD . . . is the user. Many have been nurtured with an attitude of, "Hey, it's great! I can share with everybody! The more I share, the better!"
This unfortunately leads to stuff like open calender entries of confidential meetings, etc. And don't even mention them being lost, stolen, left in bars.
My work SchtinkPad is so locked down, and monitored by our IT folks, that if I lose it, no one short of the NSA is going to get anything out of it, without a court order.
IT folks just can't know if their employees are security aware.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
One company I've worked with does it this way:
Want to use our device? Good, here it is all set up. You can use it to access internal resources.
Want to use your own? the pptp server is blah, and the exchange server is blah. Have fun, remember to lock your device, and no, we won't tell you how to set it up. You can't get anything confidential unless it's emailed. Emailing anything confidential is grounds for disceplinary action. When you lose your device, call 1-800-xxx-xxxx ASAP.
Look, "tech-savvy" user usually has no clue about corporate IT. The fact of the matter is that the work done on the company time is subject to licensing, permits, regulations, insurance, bonds, etc. That also covers tools that are used to perform the work. You must use approved tools and technologies. That includes software and computers. Tech-savvy user can use his personal software for the company business while his personal software license explicitly prohibits commercial use. Tech-savvy user can put confidential data on his personal box then it ends up in his personal backup, his personal backup system gets upgraded and the old one is sold on eBay and happy eBay buyer recovers confidential files because media destruction procedures have not been followed. I can give you dozen more scenarios that "tech-savvy" user simply does not think or care about because its is the job of corporate IT.