UPDATED 13:20 EDT / APRIL 27 2012

BYOD Still Blocked for Official Work Tasks

A recent survey by Mimecast, a supplier of cloud-based email archiving, continuity and security for Microsoft Exchange and Office 365, has revealed that BYOD – Bring Your Own Device is becoming a hot topic among enterprises, especially due to data security concerns. Mimecast carried out this survey on around 500 IT professionals and administrators in the IT industry, which revealed that 47 percent of respondents believe that consumerization of IT is very important to enterprises, while 21 percent considered BYOD as a risk for businesses. Another important finding that came out of the Mimecast survey is that 26 percent of respondents admitted that their business does not allow them to use their own device for official tasks.

“Employee support for consumerization of IT is in full swing, whether business leaders are ready to admit it or not,” said Orlando Scott-Cowley, senior product marketing manager of Mimecast. “These results show a massive divide between employee sentiment and what the enterprise is actually willing to support when it comes to personal devices. It’s time enterprises fully enable their employees’ productivity by not only supporting the range of mobile and tablet devices, but also providing the solutions that ensures corporate data remains secure.”

The survey also reported the type of operating system used by workers, with 56.3 percent of users working on Windows PCs. The rest use Apple iOS and Android-run devices.

BYOD has always been a debatable topic for enterprises across the world. It’s because the mobile workers, which have become quite common in corporate settings, are now presenting new security challenges for IT.  According to an IDC report, there were more than 105 mobile workers present in the US in 2010 alone. The global number will increase to more than 1.3 billion by end of 2015.  Despite this growth, enterprises are facing unique challenges for the security and management of mobile devices, as many users either bring their own devices into the workplace or use their business devices for personal use.  Many enterprises lack the ability to adequately support and extend access to various consumer devices, like the iPhone, iPad and Android devices, which puts both corporate data and business communications at risk.

This trend is important in the growing need for providing secure information through identity, protection and context, in addition to the best approach to mobile security and management. In fact, providing secure information is a key extension of protection for enterprises.  And by providing mobile security and management for smart devices, enterprises can allow their employees to use their device of choice without putting corporate data at risk.


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