This blog has previously discussed the notion that some organizations won't be able to control when their employees decide to use BYOD, and should therefore anticipate it even if they haven't previously expected to. A Dell Powermore article cites data from a Lookout survey, showing the ways that government workers in particular tend to use personal devices, including using "shadow IT."
In a work context, this refers to those aspects of running BYOD that aren't authorized or happen off of the "radar" of the employer. The survey found that nearly half of 1,000 polled government employees access work documents on their personal devices, something agency heads may not be prepared to respond to. In addition to the security risk, employees using unauthorized apps also poses simpler problems of data collection and management.
Bob Dimicco of Cisco's Cloud Consumption Service referenced the need to account for "shadow" BYOD use to improe IT in an article for CIO.
"If they can't see these cloud services being consumed, they can't see the risk that's being incurred," he said. Later, he says that this represents the employee's need for more agile web solutions. "IT has lost control here, because organizations, lines of business are saying I can go to the Web and get an application or a service within minutes and start being productive."
Considering this more closely, managers should keep these values in mind when modernizing legacy systems for access across different device browsers. A proper mainframe modernization plan can update data access in a way that keeps BYOD users within safe boundaries.