“Prevent data loss – or leak”

BYOD – Bring Your Own Device – puts pressure on the IT departments: users want to use their private tools to access the company data and softwares.

Mr Hougardy, is BYOD a reality, or just a marketing-buzzword from the IT planet? Is this a real trend?

“It is indeed a real trend that was born from the huge consumerization of IT devices, especially smartphones which are every day consuming more cloud applications and getting closer every day from laptops. We are indeed living in what Steve Jobs called the Post PC Era, where the need of communicating anywhere anyhow at anytime push users to bring their favourites applications with them, at the office as well as in a restaurant. Thus, they do not understand or accept to loose service availability when changing place. Because access to connectivity and cloud services have never been so user friendly, so open to retail market, business has to cope with it to prevent data loss – or leak – and keep employees satisfaction at the best.
 

BYOD seems to be adding difficulties and complexity to the IT... Is there a way to make it “easier”?

“It is a complexity and a fear to discover that IT is totally losing control on data movements and in company device inventory. Especially when the device does not belong to the company – which then has no right on it. Following this huge trend of BYOD, a lot of solutions are now available on the market to cope with this new management complexity, but first comes the need of a new compliance: IT has to adapt to this new environment before putting technical barriers .
 

BYOD comes from the user. IT departments react to this under pressure. What is usually the point of view of the company management? Are some kind of companies more concerned than others? Especially the ones with “critical datas”?

“Still a lot of companies are providing mobile devices to their employees, smartphones, tablets, laptops. In this case the IT has a total control and right on usage policy. It is a right balance in between security and user satisfaction. In this case users are also willing to adopt those devices for personal use, else they will barely use it and find a replacement by bringing their own devices, and try by any means to use them in companies by bypassing IT rules.
BYOD is a trend that aims to change the IT way of thinking security policy, they now need to adapt to a single device for personal and professional use. And there are solutions according the level of security and data protection that exist to prevent data loss, protect privacy, and provide control on the corporate data and applications.”