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Aug08
Bring Your Own Device
Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), one of the latest terms ‘trending’ in the market place, is the idea that company employees can use their own personal devices, for work purposes to access and use company applications and data.
For any IT Manager, the idea of letting an employee loose within the corporate network, with a device of which he has no knowledge, on hardware with unclear specification and running an Operating System over which he has no control, could lead to nightmares or, at minimum, sleepless nights.
On the other hand, the IT Manager is under pressure from the Executives who have purchased the latest shiny IT gadgets, and want to access their company email, documents, and reports from wherever they are.
In addition, some business sectors use technology to attract potential ‘digitally naive’ high quality staff. Presenting them a desktop PC running anything other than the very latest OS, does not necessarily present an attractive offer. The ability for staff to utilise their own device for work, can be a key differentiator in the recruitment process.
Even if personal devices are allowed access to the company network, the trouble doesn’t stop there. Figures suggest that as many as 60,000 IT devices are left in black London taxi cabs every 6 months.
Users, on the whole, are well versed in self-selecting the most appropriate device for the task at hand. What would ease the issue in the mind of the IT Manager, is to have the ability to govern the access of devices, whilst allowing users the freedom of choice. With suitable governance in place the IT Manager would be safe in the knowledge that the corporate network is secure, whilst users (and organisations) would make gains in productivity and efficiency.
SaintGroup’s approach to assist the IT Manager through this challenging arena, is to provide a range of solutions to fit budgets and integrate with those technologies already deployed.
Two form factor authentication such as SecureID from RSA, comes in to its own when deployed on mobile devices, by vastly reducing the risk of lost devices being used to compromise access to company data.
Mobile Device Management solutions (SaintGroup’s preferred partner is MobileIron – a Gartner leading provider) allow both corporate and employee owned devices to have governance policies applied. If a breach of the policies is detected, (the ‘heartbeat’ polling rate for a device can be as little as a few minutes) then a range of actions can be taken from sending the user a SMS/email notification to completely factory resetting the device in the situation where the risk of a security breach is high.
For a broader infrastructure based solution, SaintGroup is able to offer Junos Pulse which provides ‘an endpoint software platform that enables dynamic SSL VPN connectivity, network access control (NAC), mobile security, online meetings and collaboration, and application acceleration, through an simple yet elegant user interface. It removes the complexity from network connectivity and access control, and delivers optimal connectivity to end users depending on their device type and security state, location, identity, and adherence to corporate access control policies’.
As the IT market expands with new technologies and services, issues and concerns will always be raised over control, security and governance. SaintGroup is working with its customers and partners to continue to identify robust, sustainable and cost effective solutions that are flexible and adaptable to meet specific requirements.
In addition, some business sectors use technology to attract potential ‘digitally naive’ high quality staff. Presenting them a desktop PC running anything other than the very latest OS, does not necessarily present an attractive offer. The ability for staff to utilise their own device for work, can be a key differentiator in the recruitment process.
Even if personal devices are allowed access to the company network, the trouble doesn’t stop there. Figures suggest that as many as 60,000 IT devices are left in black London taxi cabs every 6 months.
Users, on the whole, are well versed in self-selecting the most appropriate device for the task at hand. What would ease the issue in the mind of the IT Manager, is to have the ability to govern the access of devices, whilst allowing users the freedom of choice. With suitable governance in place the IT Manager would be safe in the knowledge that the corporate network is secure, whilst users (and organisations) would make gains in productivity and efficiency.
SaintGroup’s approach to assist the IT Manager through this challenging arena, is to provide a range of solutions to fit budgets and integrate with those technologies already deployed.
Two form factor authentication such as SecureID from RSA, comes in to its own when deployed on mobile devices, by vastly reducing the risk of lost devices being used to compromise access to company data.
Mobile Device Management solutions (SaintGroup’s preferred partner is MobileIron – a Gartner leading provider) allow both corporate and employee owned devices to have governance policies applied. If a breach of the policies is detected, (the ‘heartbeat’ polling rate for a device can be as little as a few minutes) then a range of actions can be taken from sending the user a SMS/email notification to completely factory resetting the device in the situation where the risk of a security breach is high.
For a broader infrastructure based solution, SaintGroup is able to offer Junos Pulse which provides ‘an endpoint software platform that enables dynamic SSL VPN connectivity, network access control (NAC), mobile security, online meetings and collaboration, and application acceleration, through an simple yet elegant user interface. It removes the complexity from network connectivity and access control, and delivers optimal connectivity to end users depending on their device type and security state, location, identity, and adherence to corporate access control policies’.
As the IT market expands with new technologies and services, issues and concerns will always be raised over control, security and governance. SaintGroup is working with its customers and partners to continue to identify robust, sustainable and cost effective solutions that are flexible and adaptable to meet specific requirements.
- Tags: Customers, Deployment, Opinion Piece, Security, Services
