The Flipside of BYOD: Not Just a Concern for Employers – Fiberlink and Harris Survey

Despite its rise, the BYOD phenomenon has been under debate questioning things like cost, ROI, increased security risks, management and security concerns. These questions and concerns are mainly coming from the employer and IT side of the debate while we have seen the push for BYOD programs driven by the employees themselves. The convenience to choose a device you want, the ability to cut down on the number of devices you need to carry with and the productivity that comes with using a device you know and are familiar with are some of the common cries from employees advocating for BYOD.

A new survey conducted by Harris and commissioned by Fiberlink MaaS360 reveals that BYOD is not all gum drops and lollypops for employees, and there are growing concerns as employees realize the full scope of the Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions that are making BYOD possible. The survey revealed that employees are “alarmed about employers’ ability to access and collect personally identifiable information (PII) through mobile devices, such as iPhones, iPads and Androids.” This invasion of privacy comes from the ability of some employers to track employee location both in and outside of work, as well as review and delete personal application downloads, pictures and music. By opting-in to the MDM solutions that allow for BYOD by securing, managing and enforcing policy employees are essentially granting access to such information, but some times they are not aware of that and its not sitting well.

 The results show significant employee concern

• 82 percent of respondents consider this ability to be “tracked” an invasion of their privacy. Tracking is easily accomplished through a number of technologies built into most of the popular smartphones. Tracking with an MDM solution can be accomplished using GPS and triangulation, which provides a company with a way to locate where a device is physically located.
• Similarly, 76 percent of respondents would not give their employer access to view what applications are installed on their personal device. What users install on their personal device is considered private information.
• 75 percent of respondents would not allow their employer to install an app on their personal phone which gives the company the ability to locate them during work and non-work hours in exchange for receiving corporate email and gaining access to other corporate resources.
• Business users expressed a great deal of concern about their employers looking into their lives. In fact, very few respondents expressed no concern.
• 82 percent are concerned to extremely concerned about their employers tracking websites they browse on personal devices during non-work time
• 86 percent are concerned to extremely concerned about the unauthorized deletion of their personal pictures, music, and email profiles
• Only 15 percent are not at all concerned about employers tracking their location during non-work time
• Only 15 percent are not at all concerned about employers tracking personal apps installed on their devices

Click here for the full release and to read some best practices and features to best quell these concerns. Also, let us know what your concerns are about BYOD, privacy and security issues.