Mobile Device Management

The Delicate Balance of BYOD

Pope Benedict XVI using a tabletOne of the projects I recently worked on was preparing a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy for a financial institution. Having written the policy for AIIM, and other organizations over the years, it was a straightforward task. The real challenge was determining the right balance between convenience for employees and security for the organization.

Organizations are more and more willing to allow people to use their own devices, even though 30-35% of BYOD is invisible to an organization. The question is, “What are those organizations giving up?” What can organizations do so the restrictions placed on devices doesn’t make the employee feel like the device is no longer their personal device?

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Secure the Application, Not the Device

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I was reading an article by Patrick Gray, A radical idea for Mobile Device Management: Don’t bother, when I realized that I wasn’t alone in this world. I have long viewed Mobile Device Management (MDM) as a Red Herring and it felt good to find an ally.

For years, people have fought against restrictions on their company computers. This has been part of the spur behind the Bring Your Own Device/App/Cloud (BYOD) movement of the past several years. Do we want to head down that same path with mobile devices where we are dealing with an even wider variety of devices and less inherent control over the operating system than we did before BYOD complicated things?

Let’s think this through.

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