Concept Technology’s very own Director of Security Services John Mensel was interviewed this week by Tom Kaneshige, senior writer at CIO.com, on the topic of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device).
The following Q&A was taken from that conversation. To read the full article, visit CIO or check out this link.
What are the key concerns that you’ve seen about BYOD and privacy?
Mensel: BYOD has been creeping into our clients’ consciousness for the last few years. It’s only been in the last six months that people have been caring and worrying about it. I’m talking about smartphones and tablets.
The key difference there is the phone number. My business phone number and my personal phone number are extremely valuable property. People have been calling my business phone number for 10 years. If that number changed, I’d have a big problem.
A prototypical case is where a salesperson brings his or her own device. Their prospects and contacts are calling them on their personal phone number. When they leave your company, the phone number is leaving, too. This is the single biggest argument in favor of the business providing the device to people who are high profile. I just don’t think there’s any exception.
There are workarounds, such as Google Voice, call forwarding and others that let your BYOD smartphone receive calls from two different numbers. Can this solve the problem?
Mensel: Sure, if you want to commit to the administrative overhead of managing all of that. In all of the cases where this has been an issue with our clients, we’ve just said, “Provide the employee with the device so that you have control over it and there’s no ambiguity.”
In an enterprise that has already committed to BYOD in a large scale, it’s a different proposition. They’re talking about a huge savings.
