Mel Leith of Cognisec, a single sign-on IT solutions provider, recently wrote an article that we felt compelled to comment on. The article—“Hassle Free BYOD”—covers a BYOD solution that’s more forward-thinking than many solutions you may be familiar with.
Rather than focus on the devices themselves—how many employees actually want to let their IT managers install security measures on their personal devices?—Leith advocates for a BYOD solution focused around the cloud. A cloud solution is the opposite of “draconian” BYOD policies or “hugely expensive” (and reactive) security measures; cloud-based authentication and authorization of user devices allows secure access to apps and documents “in complete safety.”
This approach shifts focus away from individual devices as so many people seem to get hung up on when they hear BYOD. BYOD isn’t about mobile—it’s about the cloud. That device could be a smartphone or a laptop, or even a device we haven’t dreamt up yet—it doesn’t matter with a BYOD solution centered around the cloud.
We applaud Leith (and Cognisec) for their forward thinking here. A solution like the one they’re proposing could be just what it takes for 85% of businesses (or more) to have a BYOD program in place by 2020 like Gartner predicts. As huge advocates for apps in the workplace ourselves, we’re big proponents of the cloud and would love to see more widespread adoption of innovative BYOD.
The only major question, then, is when the enterprise will feel comfortable enough with what they already have before they consider a next step like this. Can we really expect the enterprise to embrace BYOD if they don’t have full grasp over BYOA? BYOA is an important next step if we want to see businesses using BYOD to its full potential. In our view, the enterprise needs to familiarize itself with (and get comfortable with) BYOA solutions before fully embracing BYOD.
We’re very glad to see folks like Leith advocating for cloud-based BYOD solutions. But from where we stand, there’s a long ways to go from where we are today to the BYOD-focused enterprise space we’d all like to see. And for that journey to happen, BYOA is likely going to play a very critical role.
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