Employee interest in BYOD continues to grow. As we wrote recently, the market for BYOD and enterprise mobility may double by 2021. But employers have struggled to balance productivity and workplace happiness gains with the security dilemmas that such policies can create.
The average smartphone has 26 apps installed, according to data from Google's "Our Mobile Planet." This may seem like an innocuous statistic, but it presents a problem. A recent study by HP found that the vast majority of the most popular apps have security flaws that users may be unaware of. Of the more than 2,000 apps that HP tested, 97 percent accessed private data sources within their devices.
"The vast majority of the most popular apps have security flaws."
Given the tendency of employees to combine work and personal data on the same device, this could be a problem. So how might employers maintain the benefits of device flexibility while still improving security? One option is to adopt a CYOD, or choose-your-own-device, policy.
Under a CYOD policy, companies can offer employees several different mobile devices or tablets. Though the employer will own and support them, workers can carry them and treat them like a personal device. Plus, they get to choose the model that best fits their needs, rather than accept whatever the company offers.
Meanwhile, employers that use a CYOD policy will have more control over device security and can build an IT infrastructure to support them.
Agile IT modernization solutions can help companies adapt to the demand of a successful BYOD or CYOD policy or any similar alternative that they offer. Inventu's Flynet Viewer meets employer and employee expectations in a way that feels familiar and simple.