The 5 Biggest BYOD Blunders

With BYOD in full swing, businesses are still making their way through uncharted waters, stumbling blindly through both its perks and complications. When implementing a BYOD system at your organization, it can help to have some sort of idea of the pitfalls that you can expect and how you can avoid them. Below, we’ve collected some of the best ways to plan for the road ahead so that “Bring Your Own Device” doesn’t turn into “Bring Your Own Disaster”…

Loose Passwords

With all the devices running on your network, there’s also bound to be a number of passwords being carried around as well. Each of the applications running on user devices are probably storing their own collection or passwords and log-on information. If you’re going to be running  a successful BYOD program at your office, ensure that employees agree to clause forbidding any company passwords from being stored in cache on mobile devices. You should also design another policy stating that if an employee does wish to store passwords on their device, then they must be saved in an application that can be securely encrypted.

Bandwidth Struggles

When companies start a BYOD policy at their office, they can often notice a significant weight load added to their already struggling network. While one of the great things about BYOD is the ability for employees to work outside the office on their own networks, operating multiple devices in-office can bring real stress to the network. Small businesses hoping that a standard DSL connection will suffice will be disheartened to learn they’ll need to invest in an upgrade.

Compatibility Complications

With a number of operating systems across numerous devices, eventually you’re going to run into the issue where an employee isn’t able to use the software necessary to open work-related documents. With this issue, you will need to inform employees that they will need to install or purchase the applications that will be able to access company supported formats. You should also ensure that employees can run an alternative browser that is guarantees to handle web based applications relied on by your business. Even with all of this being said, you’re still bound to run into issues involving user supplied devices. In these situations, tools like LogMeIn can help you access employee desktops and RDP clients.

Reduced Productivity

So you’ve just established a BYOD system! Awesome! Everything is working well; the network hasn’t dropped out, your passwords are secure, but wait… what’s that? Looks like your formerly diligent workers are busy snap chatting, instagramming, and angry-birding(?) their way through the workday. Uh-oh.

Since many of the devices running on your network will have carrier networks, employees will figure out that they can get away with usage outside of company policy. If you’re looking to avoid this BYOD blunders, you should establish a company policy that requires users to agree that when their personal devices are being used within the company, it must be used on the company’s wireless network as well. When employees are required to use the company’s wireless network, they’re much less likely to be side-tracked by their forays into Facebook.

Not Matching Security to Risk

While there are always major security risks associated with allowing employee devices to access company services, you should be sure to take the appropriate security measures to match the risk. Every company has a number of employees with their own unique privileges and you should be cognizant of these cases. If you require an employee who only requires basic internet access for their position to download ten security applications that slow down their device, you’re sure to face slow user adoption. Keep in mind that the purpose of BYOD is to make your employees more productive by giving them the opportunity to use their proffered devices. If you put unreasonable security requirements on the employees, you’re entire system may prove counter intuitive.