BYOD Adoption: The Opportunities and the Risks

An increasingly popular IT commercialization trend among SMBs, Bring Your Own Device or BYOD is being encouraged as an answer IT challenges and frequent technology changes.  It is a broad, all-encompassing concept which aims to empower the workforce of a company and save both time and operational costs. 

BYOD and its related initiatives like Bring Your Own Phone (BYOP) and Bring Your Own PC (BYOPC), Bring Your Own Laptop (BYOL), Bring Your Own Apps (BYOA)and Bring Your Own Technology (BYOT) allows employees to use their personal devices like smartphones, laptops, tablets and even USB drives to access corporate data like company emails, messaging apps and clients and even some types of company data and documents. 

But connecting to the corporate network from a personal device can be risky.  While the associated security risks can destabilize a company if not fully comprehended and regulated, most companies have chosen to tackle it head on by implementing watertight BYOD policies.  For most SMBs, their scale and nature of business is such that even the smallest lapse can destroy the organization.  Therefore, most of them have either restricted access to sensitive business information and systems, or put in place a stringent system of checks and balances which includes round-the-clock device monitoring. 

That being said, for an SMB with limited resources and IT infrastructure, BYOD adoption is the ideal way to reduce operational and IT infrastructure costs and save time.  Most BOYD devices are sanctioned and supported under a system known as shadow IT where the devices work alongside other company-owned hardware or software but is not officially supported by the organization’s IT department.  A recent survey by Techaisle into BYOD adoption trends yielded some surprising results.