BYOD

It's not possible for an organisation to be aware of and secure every mobile device on the network, not matter how much the IT department tries, because staff will always connect their own smartphones and tablets to the office wireless connection.

That's according to WWF head of IT Dave Southern, who has recently overseen the development of a new wireless and cloud-based IT infrastructure as part of the animal welfare charity's move to its new headquarters, the Living Planet Centre in Woking, Surrey.

Every organization today faces a similar set of challenges about implementing bring-your-own-device (BYOD) practices, secure access measures and new technology deployment.

When you're the CIO of a technology vendor, those challenges are magnified, as subject matter experts on any and every choice that the CIO has to make, are plentiful and often vocal. That's the challenge that faces Lee Congdon, CIO of Linux vendor Red Hat.

Apple doesn't promote enterprise features in its products, instead choosing to be seen as the consumer's champion-but this doesn't mean it doesn't have any.

In fact, Apple's upcoming mobile iOS 7, scheduled to be released to the general public this fall, is chock-full of great stuff for companies. The release will surely please the growing mass of BYOD employees who will be able to enjoy the native iPhone experience whether they're using the phone for personal or business use.

If there’s one thing the mobile industry is known for is standards. There’s a lot of them. In networking technology you have multiple Wi-Fi standards in use, 802.11 a, b, g, n, ac. In wide area wireless there are GSM, CDMA, WCDMA, LTE. And for mobile OSes you have iOS, Android, QNX, Windows Phone, et al.

The problem for mobile operating systems is that there are too many standards–and none that have the weight in the market to become de facto (as driven by adopters), just like what happened in the PC world when it was Microsoft vs. IBM (who won that one?).

Business owners are becoming increasingly concerned with the proliferation of technology in the workplace. Innovations such as BYOD, cloud, global access and social networking have many CIOs spinning their wheels on how to effectively secure their data and protect valuable intellectual property.

Security professionals are outgunned, stressed about bring your own device policies and looking for reinforcements and more people. Good luck with that.

Those takeaways sum up the Global Information Security Workforce Study (GISWS) by ISC squared, a non-profit security professional group, in partnership with Booz Allen Hamilton and conducted by Frost & Sullivan. The survey is being released at the RSA conference this week. 

The study, based on 12,000 security pro respondents, highlighted the following:

The bring your own device trend has created new opportunities for businesses looking to increase productivity from mobile employees and remote offices, but security remains a top concern for IT departments in the enterprise, according to a report from IT research firm Gartner, which found 86 percent of enterprise respondents are planning to purchase media tablets like an Apple iPad this year.

Bring-your-own-device (BYOD) schemes may work in enterprises but the risks are too great in the Ministry of Defence (MoD), a senior figure at the MoD said today.

At a BT roundtable entitled Rethink the risk, the deputy head of service operations for the MoD, captain Simon Wise, said BYOD schemes wouldn't offer the MoD the same benefits it offers some other organisations because of the security measures that it would have to put in place on the devices.