Most Companies Will Require You To Bring Your Own Mobile Device By 2017

Lucas123 writes "Half of all employers will require workers to supply their own mobile devices for work purposes by 2017, according to a new Gartner study. Enterprises that offer only corporately-owned smartphones or stipends to buy your own will soon become the exception to the rule in the next few years. As enterprise BYOD programs proliferate, 38% of companies expect to stop providing devices to workers by 2016 and let them use their own, according to a global survey of CIOs by Gartner. At the same time, security remains the top BYOD concern. 'What happens if you buy a device for an employee and they leave the job a month later? How are you going to settle up? Better to keep it simple. The employee owns the device, and the company helps to cover usage costs,' said David Willis, a distinguished analyst at Gartner."

Comments

Re:So....

[ArhcAngel]

I see the future of BYOD being running another OS instance for the work apps, or possibly a separate easily switched profile with encrypted storage.

So...BlackBerry Balance then

Re:An interesting problem occurs with unlocked pho

[admdrew]

All of the mentioned restrictions only work if the phone is locked.

The mobile management software that's out there (and used by some companies that allow BYOD) works just fine on unlocked/rooted phones.

Re:Do what they do to hourly workers.

[mysidia]

That is what's done to hourly (especially to min wage workers) workers all the time. They deduct for background checks, uniforms, etc ....

Not generally lawful

An employer can lawfully withhold amounts from an employee’s wages only: (1) when required or empowered to do so by state or federal law, or (2) when a deduction is expressly authorized in writing by the employee to cover insurance premiums, benefit plan contributions or other deductions not amounting to a rebate on the employee’s wages, or (3) when a deduction to cover health, welfare, or pension contributions is expressly authorized by a wage or collective bargaining agreement.
Some common payroll deductions often made by employers that are unlawful include: ...
Gratuities. An employer cannot collect, take, or receive any gratuity or part thereof given or left for an employee, or deduct any amount from wages due an employee on account of a gratuity given or left for an employee.
Bond. If an employer requires a bond of an applicant or employee, the employer must pay the cost of the bond.
Uniforms. If an employer requires that an employee wear a uniform, the employer must pay the cost of the uniform.
Business Expenses. An employee is entitled to be reimbursed by his or her employer for all expenses or losses incurred in the direct consequence of the discharge of the employee’s work duties. ....

....
...
Q. If I break or damage company property or lose company money while performing my job, can my employer deduct the cost/loss from my wages?
A. No, your employer cannot legally make such a deduction from your wages if, by reason of mistake or accident a cash shortage, breakage, or loss of company property/equipment occurs.
..
Labor Code Section 224 clearly prohibits any deduction from an employee’s wages which is not either authorized by the employee in writing or permitted by law, and any employer who resorts to self-help does so at its own risk

security nightmare

[dutchwhizzman]

Gartner is so incredibly wrong here. You can't control a plethora of devices connecting to your office network. In reality, you'll have to assume that all devices that connect to you are inherently evil and users using them will be snooped on and their logon credentials will get sniffed. This means you first have to "weaponize" every application you run on your IT infrastructure and make it available as a web service. You'll have to issue two-factor authentication that uses a dynamic element such as a challenge/response hardware key generator. Only when you have everything like that in place, you can "safely" start using BYOD in a corporate environment. By then, there is no more need for people to actually be in the office to do their work, apart from meetings. For meetings, you can always call in or video conference from home. Effectively, the only way to pay for this is to quit renting office space and go completely virtual. Because you no longer rent office space, renting a separate server room will cost you dearly and you'll need your admins to have office space close to that room, so you're still running a brick company. Going to "the cloud" will be more or less mandatory for such a company, from an economic view point. I don't see a significant amount of companies do all this within the next four years. I do see a lot trying to save a few bucks on the abysmal hardware budgets they already have and fail horribly at productivity and security and reverse their decisions, spending much more in the process and not gaining anything.

Re:The old days...

[ryanov]

Unionize.

Re:So....

[Solandri]

Samsung is already working on a solution to that. Basically, instead of your employer having full run of the phone, all the employer stuff is put into a sandboxed instance of the OS. Your personal phone runs into another sandboxed instance. Like having two virtual machines running simultaneously, you can flip between the two. Your employer has full control over one, and you have full control over the other.

I'm a little skeptical of how well it'll work in practice (backups will probably be problematic). But if they can pull it off, it will eliminate the need to carry two phones just because your workplace wants full access and control.