More and more organizations around the world are allowing employees to use their own mobile devices to work so that they can have access to company data from anywhere at any time, with any device. The phenomenon BYOD began to gain ground around 2007 when executives and board members brought their first personal smartphones and tablets to the workplace. Since then, the BYOD trend has been greatly influenced as employees began to have the same flexibility requirements and employers saw productivity gains since they had allowed employees to use mobile devices both at work and at home.
The behavior of employees and employers
The Cisco company recently revealed that 95% of IT people and business presidents surveyed in the United States reported that their businesses allow employees to have their own devices in some way. Research continues and cites employees' desire to use their favorite device anywhere, and the ability to conduct personal and business activities at any time, as one of the top reasons the BYOD policy has such traction. Executives seem excited about using their personal devices in the workplace, with more than 33% of workers between the ages of 20 and 29 saying they would not accept any rule that would ban BYOD.
Despite years of rampant BYOD proliferation, some employers are beginning to question the existence of a sustainable economic benefit. For example, Gartner's technology analysis states that while BYOD can reduce costs, it typically does not. Gartner argues as follows: “As enterprises appear to be giving more capabilities to mobile devices, however, the cost of software, infrastructure, techniqueof support and related services will increase over time.”
On the other hand, some companies claim that the implementation of a BYOD policy can save businesses too much money and that they have a way to support it. For example, VMware claims to have saved 2.000.000 dollars by moving to a BYOD policy that required employees to buy their own devices and rely on their own mobile communications providers to support customers.
Do the IT department of the company need to play the role of a "bad" police officer?
Despite the cost-saving potential offered by BYOD, many lawyers fear that by allowing employees to use personal devices for corporate purposes, this will lead to an increase in the challenges of privacy, property and security. This view often puts them in an enviable position to be the only ones who disagree with other executives trying to save money by setting up an BYOD approach.
In fact, alternative approaches have many similar issues to BYOD, so the risks and benefits of any portable approach have to be taken into account. For example, employers who do not allow employees to use their personal devices for their work often provide proprietary systems as an alternative. It is no surprise that workers almost always use these devices for personal and business reasons (whether or not they are allowed), thus opening up many of the same legal issues for data security and risks.
A corporate device policy can reduce the risk of privacy-based objections when access to them and their content is required by the employer. However, these risks associated with data loss and theft they are not removed regardless of device ownership. This means that any further incremental risk reduction gained from an employer's device policy must be weighed against the amount of money that could have been saved by implementing a BYOD policy. In other words, legal counsel must understand that ownership of the device (employee versus employer) is not the only factor to consider when determining a mobile device policy.
Today's reality lies in the fact that workers expect to be able to use mobile devices for business and personal use, regardless of whether the device belongs to the employer or the employee. Similarly, many employers believe that by providing workers with the flexibility of using portable devices for professional and personal use, they increase worker productivity. Luckily for legal counselors, new mobile technologies coupled with internal policies by their organizations provide the flexibility to implement the portable approach they think is more economical without being compromised. In other words, the legal counsel has the possibility to become part of the agency's solution and stop being considered a "bad" policeman when discussing the implementation of a mobile-related strategy.
Making the beginning
Although decisions about when and how to develop mobile devices are usually of secondary importance to IT departments, dealing with the consequences of using portable devices is usually left to the legal counsel. Many times these problems could have been avoided or at least minimized by the proper planning and the contribution of the legal department.
Unfortunately, the legal department is often overlooked as it is not considered part of the decisions related to investment in technology. This is why the legal counsel should actively seek to understand and address the potential risks and costs associated with the use of portable devices as soon as possible.
