While nearly 70% of all smart phone-owning professionals now using their personal device to access corporate data, according to Ovum, a more worrying statistic is the fact that almost 80% of such devices are unmanaged.
The analyst warns that these powerful and yet unmanaged devices are "not only at risk of data loss" but organisations "unable to claim they took reasonable preventative measures".
In what Ovum claims is the largest study conducted into employee bring your own device (BYOD) behaviour and attitudes, with input from more than 4,000 full-time employees, it found a "concerning level" of ignorance by IT professionals about the trend.
Nearly half of the respondents’ employers’ IT departments either did not know of BYOD or were ignoring its existence, operating a "don’t ask, don’t tell" policy, while a further 8.1% actively discouraged it. Levels of ignorance by IT were significantly higher in mature economies with more rigid working practices, such as those of Continental Europe, compared to high-growth economies such as Brazil, India and South Africa.
"Despite much speculation, BYOD is here to stay. Therefore, it’s worrying to see evidence of such a high proportion of businesses burying their head in the sand when it comes to planning adequately for it," says Richard Absalom, senior analyst at Ovum. "BYOD multiplies the number of networks, applications, and end-points through which data is accessed. These are the three main points at which data is vulnerable; so, if left unmanaged, BYOD creates a huge data security risk."
One of the key questions about the outlook for the BYOD phenomenon, argues Ovum, is whether, as enterprises update their corporate device fleets to the large touchscreen devices that employees actually want and are buying through consumer channels, the effect will be neutralised. However, the analyst’s research shows that 50% of employees say privacy concerns would stop them accessing their own personal apps on a corporate provisioned smart phone. For half of all employees, a corporately provisioned smart phone or tablet is not a perfect substitute for a personally owned device, and this will continue to give momentum to the BYOD trend.
Ovum also reports a divide in BYOD behaviour and corporate IT attitudes between high-growth and mature economies. "BYOD in the developing IT and consumer electronics markets is big and structurally predisposed to get bigger," said Absalom. "Overall, we are seeing more encouragement of BYOD behaviour in high-growth economies, such as South Africa, Brazil, India and the South Eastern Tiger economies, than in mature economies, notably continental Western Europe."
"The way people work will have a profound effect on how BYOD is rolled out and managed within an organisation. As such, it’s imperative that IT departments act quickly to develop and implement clear policies governing BYOD. BYOD can provide an added advantage in terms of productivity and efficiency but to do this it will be important to get the right blend of process, policy, people, and technology management," said Absalom.
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