How employers can keep their IT systems safe in this BYOD era

In an information technology executive’s ideal world, a company’s network environment would be as sterile as an operating room. Access to equipment would be tightly controlled and any person coming in to use it would be required to submit to the IT equivalent of a surgical scrub-down.

This would go a long way toward keeping systems secure and functioning. But in reality, it’s simply not feasible. Why? Because in the real world, a business network environment tends to look less like an operating room than a bus station. In addition to employees logging into the system on approved devices, IT managers have to expect those same employees to want to log in with their own smart phones, tablets and laptops. Add to that the need for guests — contractors, clients and others working temporarily onsite — and suddenly that dream of a sterile system seems far away indeed.

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In my experience, IT systems managers typically face a choice. They can do their best to keep everything except company-owned devices off the network, or they can embrace the new Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) ethos that many companies increasingly accept as inevitable.

The first option may seem tempting, but it’s a losing game. Employees’ smart phones and iPads are an ever-more important tool for both personal and professional productivity. Barring them from the work environment is bad for morale and, frankly, bad for your IT system. The truth is people are going to bring these devices to work, and when they do, they will want them on the network. If you don’t give them a safe and secure way to connect, they will inevitably try to find their own way in — possibly through work-arounds that create new problems for the system.

The smart IT executive must lean to embrace the BYOD concept and create policies that allow workers the flexibility they need while maintaining a stable and secure network environment.

While not an exhaustive list, here are a few key issues that should be top of mind for anyone considering a BYOD system in the workplace:

●Welcome personal devices, but make sure you know what they are and how they will be supported.

Employees should be given clear guidelines on what sort of devices are allowed to have access to the enterprise network. In some cases, clients of mine have found it useful to give employees a personal technology budget.

They allow them to choose between a company-issued device and, say, $1,500 to spend on an alternative of their choice. Those alternative devices, of course, must meet certain standards, but they allow the employee some flexibility if they want to use something different from the company’s standard issue machine. It also means that the company might benefit from improved technology when employees opt for more sophisticated equipment, covering any additional cost out of their own pockets.

Such a system, however, must include a requirement that employees obtain hardware support for their device, as no corporate IT department can expect to be able to service a wide range of devices.