Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is an increasingly common practice in the workplace. Staff use their own laptops, tablets & smartphones on your business network as part of their day to day work. However, what does that mean for the business, infrastructure, management & security?

Some studies suggest that approximately 90% of businesses allow some form of personally owned technology to be used in the workplace and some employers partially fund the purchase of an employee’s device to encourage them to use it as a business tool.

With this in mind it is important to remember that with the increased use of personal devices such as smartphones and tablets there is also an increase in traffic passing over your office wireless network, in particular as the devices brought by your staff increasingly eschew wired connections.

A common statement by BYOD users is that ‘I get faster access at home’ but the reality is that home networks are built for three or four users and almost exclusively for Internet access. Your business tends to have more users that access internal resources such as files as well as the Internet. Enabling employees to use their own devices therefore needs some thought to your own office network.

Whatever the advocates of wireless say, the most reliable are by wire and the largest amount of bandwidth for users to share on your network is by wire. Large numbers of users sharing the office wireless connection will eventually bring issues with performance as the wireless bandwidth available starts to get used up.

Compatibility is another consideration. The company network should be designed with the largest variety of device capabilities in mind. In particular Apple devices, so popular in the consumer market are much less used in the business market dominated by Windows. Can people with Apple devices get easily logged on to your network?

A final consideration is security. With the blurring of personal and business use, questions emerge about what business sensitive data the user may access. What type of data is being held, where is it being stored, how is it transferred? What happens if the person who owns the device leaves employment? What happens in the event of theft or loss?

These are not your devices so how do you ensure that they are safe? In a data network wholly provided for by the business, issues such as systems updates and anti-virus are dealt with within your IT setup in a structured manner. With BYOD, there is no guarantee what the employee may bring that could end up on your network. A clear understanding of policy and responsibility is vital.