The double-edged sword of BYOD

Bring Your Own Device policies can be liberating to organizations, as users are able to more freely access important work apps on their personal devices. However, they also pose hazards to the unwary companies, even in a time when much of the issues surrounding cybersecurity are well-known. 

The results show a division between companies taking BYOD seriously and those without a formalized policy.

A Dell-sponsored article by Stowe Boyd recently mentioned the "split" surrounding the concept of BYOD, at least according to information from Champion Solutions Group. This data does show companies requiring users to create a password of six to ten characters for complexity. However, 35 percent of companies also reportedly either have no policy for login failures at all or allow users more than ten attempts to use a password before locking them out. 

Though there are some encouraging figures in this research, the results still show a division between companies taking BYOD seriously and those without a formalized policy. The latter group in particular accounts for more than half of organizations.

In an article for AVNetwork, Carolyn Heinze discusses another issue pertaining to successful BYOD: updating devices successfully.

"When it comes to managing updates, what's a tech manager to do?" she asked. "Even if the devices are company-owned, keeping them up to date––or operating on the version the IT department wants them operating on––is a considerable endeavor, especially when there are so many variables out of the tech manager's control."

In the context of a legacy system modernization, companies can prepare their internal systems for better integration with browser-based options. These will help them avoid the difficulties of applets and other tools that take too much time and effort to implement.