01 Nov 2011
Today we each famously walk around with more computing power and memory storage than was needed to land man on the moon. It might be a mobile phone, an iPod, a BlackBerry, an iPad 2 or just a humble USB stick.
Further reading
There is now an increasing trend to allow employees to bring all these personal “must-have” items into work. So do you allow your staff to use social networks either through your business systems or via any of these personal devices while in the office?
The risks
Companies face ever-increasing challenges when protecting their proprietary and sensitive information. In the current economic climate, it may be tempting to an employee with a grievance to pilfer a nice juicy data file with a view to selling it on.
Two years ago, according to a survey undertaken by IT security group Cyber-Ark, 58 per cent of British workers would be prepared to take confidential company data if faced with redundancy. The same survey found 40 per cent of UK staff were already taking confidential data –and would use it to help to negotiate a new job.
Businesses are also facing increasing demands from staff to work from home or at other locations that better suit their lifestyles or because the businesses themselves demand more availability from staff out of hours. Mechanisms to use data outside the office have proliferated and policing the potential spread of this data can cause massive security headaches.
The image of the employee sneaking out with a desktop computer tucked under their coat or a hard drive concealed in a sock may seem far-fetched, but for the past few years, staff routinely and for legitimate reasons have walked in and out of companies carrying CDs, DVDs, laptops and USB sticks.
Now smartphones, tablets and all the other gadgetry we each have contain a drive that is easily plugged into a computer onto which can be copied far more information than could ever fit onto a CD, DVD or USB stick. None of these personal gadgets is overt in the way that a PC is.
This is an excellent article and highlights some important trends and issues. One additional area that is important to consider with regard to consumerisation and consumer consumption of new apps such as Facebook on ‘corporate network time’ is the impact on productivity – both from the point of view of employees' downtime and network bandwidth.
50% of companies surveyed by industry analyst firm Forrester Research said at least 30% of their bandwidth is being consumed by social networking traffic. The thought of business-critical data being slowed down because of employees’ online social media habits is ulcer-inducing to IT. As a result, the management of access to social media and monitoring of its subsequent bandwidth usage is as essential as ensuring policies of usege are in place. In the spirit of transparency – as a leader in global IT security - we have a vested interest in sharing this point of view. However, the means to visualise, prioritise and protect network traffic flow is a business critical requirement.
Posted by: Florian Malecki, EMEA Senior Product Marketing Manager at SonicWALL 22 Nov 2011
I think this article raises some really good points around data leakage and how we need to tighten up our security; however it reads to me as though you're suggesting consumerisation is something that we can just say no to.
I hope it's not too "spammy" to mention the post I wrote today (partly inspired by yours - so thank you!) but in a href="http://blogs.ts.fujitsu.com/uk-ie/cto/2011/11/bring-you-own-or-use-what-you-are-told" I suggest "use what you are told" is a risky strategy for a CIO to take in this day and age /a .
CIOs who ignore the needs of their users risk alienation and being sidelined as other functions simply work around them, implementing shadow IT.
Ultimately we need to embrace consumerisation and find a way to implement IT as a service, whilst maintaining data security.
Posted by: Mark Wilson 16 Nov 2011
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