IT consume
technology provides many opportunities for workers - and create significant
challenges for IT
As workers
increasingly use consumer technology of the company or individual own in
working, the IT managers face a growing challenge - to maintain corpotare data
control when hundreds or thousands of new devices are added to their technology.
Using tablets and smartphones - along with social network and free online
services - at work are making IT managers to rethink about their game.
The analysts
and data center management at the Consumer IT Technology in the enterprise
(CITE) meeting of the IDG Enterprise in San Francisco last week mainly advises
companies to capture and control consumer devices rather than against using
them in the workplace.
“If you try to
block it, it will go around you”, Dion Hinchcliffe, strategic management vice
president of Dachis Group, a business consulting firm based in Austin said.
Some companies
had to make difficult decisions to ensure that sensitive corporate data is not
leaked from the new equipments.
For example,
Hyatt Hotels has implemented a policy to delete data from any personal device
that used at workplace if the owner lost it or left the company.
Hyatt only
allowed employees to use consumer devices after discovering last year that some
people ignored the prohibition.
“We have
released Microsoft ActiveSync and started seeing the equipments that we know
they were not of us”, said Dave Malcolm, chief of information security. “So we
said ‘let's stop burying head in the sand and begin to solve our problems and
secure them’”.
Winthdrop
Phillippe, managing director of The Enterprise Mobility Foundation, said the
best way for companies to get benefits from consumer technology, while still
maintaining data security, is to implement the policies that only enabled
devices owned by the enterprise.
“You can not
fight against consumer IT technology but you can choose the battle”, he said.
“It is not about data protection. It is risk management”.
Winthdrop said
companies should allow employees to choose to use any equipment that they think
can help them, as long as the equipment is owned and managed by the company. By
this way, IT will secure data on devices more easily.
“They can
allow employees to download Angry Birds, but a controlled way”, he explained.
Hinchcliffe
noted that the education of employees who are using the device about how to
keep data safey is also important as the development of tough security methods.
He suggested
that companies should set up simple rules, such as ban saving data in the
cloud. “We have to get used to the emerging changes. We did not want to control
it”, said Hinchcliffe.
IT consumer
technology has shown significant benefits on some organizations.
For example,
using the tablets owned by company by the beer selling group has helped sales
of food distributors Ben E. Keith increased last year, during the period of
economic instability, according to Steve Fleming, vice president of information
and management of this company said.
He said that
the sale represents lost an average of 40 seconds to introduce the product to
the store manager. Tablets allow them to answer customer questions faster than
before.
Fleming said
sales of this private company have increased by 33 million last year. “I
totally believe it is due to additional functions in the hands of the sales
team.
