BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) is the new mantra for modern day work spaces. The IT provisioned and corporate owned devices have already become a thing of the past. Having realized the potential and benefits of BYOD policy, more and more companies are adopting this new trend. With the adoption of this policy, businesses can see a higher employee productivity, greater employee satisfaction levels and lower IT costs. But allowing an employee, to use his/her own device at the workplace has its own list of challenges. And there are many IT managers who have nightmares about data loss and privacy breach scenarios that may arise due to the implementation of BYOD.
With the BYOD policy, the employee would be using their own devices to access various confidential company information. Many such information would be stored in their personal devices. And when they decide to move on, they can easily carry such sensitive information with them. That is the dilemma IT managers face today. How do you offer employees this benefit, without costing your business? How do you control the data and access rights from a personal device?
The good news is, there are many ways to get around these problems. One of the emerging trends in the IT industry is the use of containerized applications. These applications were primarily used beforehand as Mobile Device Management applications. With the mobiles turning into Smartphones, the employees could access and download files from their handheld devices too. So, in came the concept of containerized applications. What does it do? Every employee needs to install this containerized application in their devices. The application would allow the administrators to restrict, block or remove the sensitive files from a device as and when they deem neccesary. This means, while the employee can download and access every file, IT managers have a certain control over how it is used.
But, the containerized applications can be easily misconceived by the employees as spying software. They can view it as an infringement over their personal data and privacy. So, before you implement BYOD in your workplace, it is essential to explain the entire mechanism associated with it. Explain the need and utility of the containerized applications. The employees should be clearly informed that the application only controls the data that is downloaded from the company servers, it will have nothing to do with any other data sitting within their devices.
As you can see, making the BYOD work is not that difficult. With some logical steps the IT team as well as overall employees can stay happy with this new policy.