BYOD is an acronym that stands for "bring your own device." It's a technique that is making waves in the business community these days, particularly because of both the cost saving and productivity-increasing benefits that comes with this decision. If you want to institute a BYOD policy at your own business and want to make sure that it actually delivers the results that you're after, you'll need to keep a few key things in mind.
Suggested Device List
One of the first things that you'll need to do is generate a suggested device list for employees who are thinking about purchasing smartphones or tablets and who want to make sure that those devices will work in the office. All mobile devices should be models that you can adequately support with a BYOD policy and everything that this implies, including both service and security.
Personal Use
You'll also want to create a policy to set forth that specifies exactly when personal use is permitted on these devices and when it isn't. Just because an employee is bringing their personal smartphone to work doesn't mean that they suddenly have a free pass to check their Facebook page or send text messages all day. While it is unreasonable to expect users to restrict BYOD usage to strictly work functions, you'll still want to lay down ground rules moving forward.
Need for Additional Support Staff
By implementing the appropriate BYOD onboarding engine, the requirement of additional support staff is now unnecessary. Onboarding tools that are available allow for things like staff sponsorship, front desk provisioning, self-service kiosks, event provisioning and more. None of these activities require even as much as a help desk ticket to be created on behalf of the user.
Security
When a device containing private, confidential business information is essentially being used in the same way that a personal device is, security becomes even more important. The ability to create and enforce policies allows IT to tailor the network resources that are available to the BYOD users work functions.
BYOD devices can and should be secured with multiple levels of encryption supported, along with additional support for technology like 802.1x for the best possible results moving forward.
Device Visibility and Minimizing Network Impact When Moving to BYOD
By making use of best of breed technology, you and your staff will be able to see exactly which devices are on the network and what they're doing at any given moment. Application visibility and control is a great way to both provide your team with the information necessary to make adjustments moving forward and to help maintain the highest possible performance of your business' WLAN. This will minimize the impact that BYOD has on the network in general, allowing you to provide the latest high speed wireless connectivity to corporate owned devices, while still supporting staff, contractor and guest devices.
Make BOYD work for your company with help from TTI. Contact us today to get started!
