Mobile Device Management and BYOD is Not Just a Concern for the Enterprise

New technology and society’s new mobile lifestyle not only in our personal lives, but in our work lives as well has not just affected the enterprise but State and Federal Governments as well. The state of California is a perfect example of that. CIO reports that in the face of the states looming $16 billion financial troubles the deputy director and chief information officer at the state’s Department of Health Care Services was tasked with cutting some budget and was told to cut 50% of state issued cell phones. He did, and to counter act this loss in mobility and connectivity for employees has tried to implement a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) program.

While a good idea in theory there was opposition from internal IT Department members due to security and risk management concerns in letting employee mobile devices onto their network with access to internal and critical data. The solutions, Mobile Device Management (MDM) from Good Technology creating an “unbreakable partition” between personal and business data, stated the Deputy Director. With MDM calming their security and risk management fears, their troubles now lie with employee adoption of the BYOD program. We can assume that the state ofCaliforniais hoping for this adoption as CIO reports the Deputy Director “expects to save about $1.6 million”.  Click here to read from CIO about California’s approach to MDM and BYOD.