“Bring Your Own Device,” or BYOD for short, is the increasingly popular practice employed by a number of offices, which allows employees to use their personal tech, such as smartphones, laptops and tablets, for professional purposes. Given that a reported 70% of people globally now work from home at least once a week, it would appear to be the natural progression that work technology is no longer confined to the office. However, while the benefits of BYOD seem obvious, the dangers and drawbacks of it are sometimes less well known.
BYOB: A growing trend but also a growing threat?
There are a number of things to stay aware of when it comes to office IT: security threats are increasingly prevalent as we become more and more reliant upon sending and receiving data for everyday work tasks. The risks of account hacking and data breaches are only magnified by the practice of using your own personal devices. Yet there are a number of upsides for both businesses and employees too; here we explore the biggest pros and cons.
The pros
The upsides to allowing employees to use their own devices for work centers mainly on two distinct areas: in-house cost savings, and a boost to employee productivity and morale. By removing the need for your company to invest in hardware for all of your employees in the shape of laptops and mobiles, you are immediately able to reduce your spending dramatically. Moreover, the freedom afforded by letting employees use their own devices can not only boost morale but allow greater working flexibility. This means that parents can work around their children’s school schedule with greater ease and thereby improve their quality of life. This has shown to almost always increase satisfaction with their job and in turn, improve productivity.
The cons
There are a number of downsides to having people use their own personal devices for work purposes. The two main ones are the threat of malicious software affecting company systems, and legal disputes over who takes responsibility for damage to the property.
BYOD policies are often unclear as to what happens in case of damage to the property and who is liable for it. While there are a number of companies such as simplesurance that specialize in offering insurance that matches the digitally-forward way of thinking which remote workers are asking for, there remains a broader question over the extent to which a personal device can be seen as a work asset and its relation to the loss of earnings. This is a topic that needs to be clearly clarified between a business’ management and its employees before migrating to BYOD.
When working in an office, it is commonplace for company IT to have set up a stringent set of security checks and a firewall to protect the network from any malicious software from hackers. Typically, this means that all emails and company documents are safely stored beyond reach. However, when employees start using their own smartphones and laptops to send emails and receive documents, they are no longer subject to the same level of protection. Any harmful software or Trojans that may already be present on a personal device is then able to rapidly infiltrate into a company system and potentially wreak havoc.
The takeaway
No business should jump into BYOD without first considering it from every angle. If the employees are asking for it and the security measures are in place to protect company data, then your business could certainly begin practicing BYOD as an option.
