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Do the Risks of BYOD Outweigh the Benefits? (Video)

Posted by Roblimo on from the security-is-often-an-afterthought-if-it-is-thought-about-at-all dept.

Steve Hasselbach is a Senior Solutions Architect (AKA Marketing Guy -- but he's also a serious techie) for Peak 10, a datacenter company. In his work he deals with his clients' security problems, and often shakes his head at how security unconscious so many businesses are, even after endless publicity about corporate IT security holes costing companies millions of dollars.

He says, "...it doesn’t shock me anymore, but you’d be so shocked and surprised at how noncompliant this country is in terms of businesses around things like healthcare data and all that." In this interview, Steve talks about how (surprise!) the current BYOD trend is making things worse, but isn't necessarily responsible for the worst security holes, and offers benefits that might outweigh the increased security risks it brings.. (Note: The transcript contains material not included in the video.)

4 of 82 comments (clear)

  1. "The transcript contains material not in the video by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Then it's not a transcript, is it?

  2. A Story about BYOD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I used to work at BlackBerry. Obviously a company serious about security for corporate customers with BES.

    We would meet with those customers, and gather requirements about what features and security they needed. We'd review laws and industry rules, and we built software to meet those needs.

    IT departments said:
    - We need to be able to control what applications can run on devices
    - We need to lock down the device and remove applications like messaging
    - We need to prevent copy and paste. We need to turn off lots of features.

    So we built these things. We let them lock down the device. That's what the laws said, and that's what our customers wanted.

    Then some executive would ask, why am I carrying around two phones? And why are we buying people BlackBerry's when they have iPhones or Androids. Why can't I cut and paste?

    And then execs started to realize how much money they could save by getting employees to use their own phones.

    And security went out the window. BlackBerry, listening to their customers, dug their own grave.

    1. Re:A Story about BYOD by 110010001000 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Actually this should be modded up. You should never implement what customers say they want. You should find out what they want. And definitely don't ask the IT people. They have a very narrow view of the world.

  3. Re:No by NotInHere · · Score: 4, Insightful

    good network security such as MAC registration

    MAC addresses are quite public, static, and easily fakeable information, they are by no means a "good" way to authenticate devices.