13/08/2012

By Scott Thompson

Many companies worry that BYOD increases viruses and drives up costs.

A new study from Lieberman Software Corporation asked respondents if they believed allowing employees to connect their own devices (such as USB drives, mobile phones, portable PCs and home computers) to the corporate network increased costs – 67 per cent said it did.

The survey was carried out among 250 IT professionals in London. When asked what caused the organisation the biggest headache, 43 per cent cited an employee device introducing a virus; 26 per cent pointed the finger at employees losing a device, with employees stealing data the biggest concern for 22 per cent of respondents.

Philip Lieberman, president and CEO at Lieberman Software, believes the BYOD wave is being driven by companies, such as Apple, pushing their products as corporate ready or compatible – even if they’re not. “We’ve been here before. It’s the same classic back door sales process used to promote PCs in the 1980s, where the large IT shops controlled both the glass house and what was on the desktops. Back then users and managers would show how PCs were better, faster and more flexible than the ‘stone age’ solutions offered by IT. Ultimately IT was forced to adopt PCs as their corporate standard. The new twist today is that the interlopers are devices that will always be owned by the consumer, not the company.”