Enterprises are riding the boom in the adoption of mobility devices such as mobiles, laptops and tablets in the UAE and are increasingly allowing employees, visitors and even guests (in the case of the hospitality industry) to connect to the enterprise network on their own devices. The trend, popularly being termed ‘bring your own device' (BYOD), offers a host of benefits to the enterprise.
Ray McGroarty, Director, enterprise solutions provider Polycom, says, "Advantages include the reduction in the firm's IT maintenance costs as employees are responsible for the maintenance of their own devices; increased worker satisfaction due to employees using the devices they are most comfortable with; and the attractiveness of a BYOD to top performers and tech-savvy job candidates who place high importance on flexible working. This has been found to motivate employees to be more efficient with their time, increase employee morale and make business more productive."
Ahmed Etman, Borderless Networks Sales Lead for Cisco emerging markets, says, "The capability of providing pervasive access to data and applications when and where needed certainly has a direct impact on employee productivity. Cisco's end-to-end wired, wireless and virtual private network (VPN) performance management and policy integration with mobile device management (MDM) solutions results in superior user and IT experience, without sacrificing security, visibility or control."
Chris Kozup, Senior Director of Marketing, Aruba, says, "Many devices such as the iPad support new applications that can also transform existing business processes. BYOD solutions should ensure that any device — iOS, Android, BlackBerry or Windows — can be securely connected to the corporate network with minimal IT intervention."
Globally, more than 5 per cent of employees tapped into their own tablets for work-related tasks last year, according to the Global BYO Index created by Citrix Systems, a networking and technology company. About 25 per cent used personal smartphones and more than 35 per cent used their own laptops. The portability of these products helped fuel enterprise IT spending, forecast to grow in the Middle East and Africa to nearly €70 billion (Dh333.92 billion) in 2012, up more than 6 per cent from last year, according to data released last month by Gartner.
However, with increased complexity levels, network and data security become key concerns, not to speak of the additional impact it can have on bandwidth. All it takes for a data breach is a lost laptop or misplaced mobile falling into the wrong hands. Without the right measures in place before allowing personal mobility devices to be used, the corporate network is also threatened with increased risk of viruses and malware. Network policies, software and infrastructure that take these concerns into account are key before BYOD is facilitated.
BT's recently released research states that 82 per cent of companies say they already allow BYOD or will do so within the next 24 months. Four out of ten companies experienced security breaches due to people bringing in unauthorised devices. BT's innovations to its BT Assure security portfolio helps organisations better address a wide array of security issues posed by the growing presence of personal devices on corporate networks, the large scale deployment of cloud solutions and the challenges of ‘big data'.
Alain Penel, Vice-President Middle East Africa, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, says, "One of the key components to BYOD policies is for organisations to ensure that they do not compromise on bandwidth consumption or safety. Alcatel's infrastructure solution, a broad portfolio of converged networks, provides enterprises the ability to create and maintain consistent user policies and profiles as well as role-based access control to the user within an enterprise network to safely and dynamically allow users to BYOD into the enterprise network. Areas where BYOD has been a success have been customer-centric organisations that ensure the customer's calls never go unanswered. We have seen this successfully used in this region by the airline, hospitality, education and health-care industries."
Sam Tayan, Regional Director, MENA, VMware, says, "Staff want one mobile device that caters for all [personal and professional] needs. However, there's an obvious security issue in a business phone, with access to corporate networks and sensitive data, being used in a personal environment. We're seeing technology evolve to cater to this. VMware Horizon Mobile, for example, effectively enables two phones — a virtual and a physical one — to fully operate on one physical device, allowing the user to ‘put' a business phone on a consumer device and switch between the two."
Products focusing on risks posed by BYOD include Trend Micro's Mobile Armor and Mobile Security for data encryption such that in the case of the device being lost, the data remains inaccessible to unauthorised people. Trend Micro's Smart Protection Network protects data from being compromised by social engineering and phishing, among other techniques. Sophos Mobile Control allows IT teams to connect mobile devices to the company network, apply security policies on the devices and constantly monitor them. Sophos NAC controls the access of partner or employee devices to the network based on rules or state of the device.
Thomas Lippert, Product Manager, Sophos, says, "Opening the WAN for BYOD devices significantly extends the number of endpoints in the company. While company-owned PCs and laptops have strict security policies applied as well as anti-virus, firewall or encryption, this cannot be assumed for BYOD devices." However, it's not just the enterprise but also the device owners who need to assume responsibility to secure their devices.
Nick Black, Senior Technical Manager, Trend Micro, says, "Cybercriminals develop five new threats every second. Individuals can protect their handsets, be it for personal use or business — use the smartphone's built-in security features; make sure it's properly configured and take advantage of security settings like passwords."
BYOD combines an individual's personal and professional lives whether within reach of their home networks or roaming in another. So, what you use to connect to the workplace needs to match your style at that evening party — in a brilliant blurring of lines between work and private spaces.
