BYOD: Bring your own device could spell end for work PC

[secrets in symmetry]

The BBC say: BYOD: Bring your own device could spell end for work PC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17017570)


Do you dream of a world where you have your choice of laptop, smartphone or tablet at work; all of which connect seamlessly one to another, and are constantly updated?

Sitting at your desk, feeling the red mist descend as your ancient XP desktop computer tries and fails to open your inbox, this might seem like an impossible dream. But for some people that day is already here.No, I don't dream of that world - I've lived in it for years! Ok, the tablet bit is new, and I don't have one (although some people do), but I've had my choice of work laptop for years, and I've used my smartphone for work email, etc, for years.

Is this style of working still as rare as the BBC suggests, or am I ahead of my time lol?

[linnie612]

Ooh, get a life!:lol:

[secrets in symmetry]

It's a serious question linnie612 - not like the one about Hell lol!

[John Little]

This file cannot be opened.

This format is unrecognised.

This file is corrupt or damaged and will be closed down

This package is not supported by this computer's software...

My expertise in this area is limited, but from my own experiences I would say that there is a long long way to go before it's possible to use your own device at work for everybody. It's bad enough trying to get work that my grand-daughter has done on XP to open on an Imac. It does not.

[secrets in symmetry]

I'll admit that the seamless bit still has some wrinkles, but so much stuff is done on the web these days that it now matters less whether your PC/laptop is run by you, or by your employer's IT team.

[Phill]

It all depends on who picks up the tab?!

It is entirely possible to make all your Blackberry's, iPhone's, iPad's, Mac's, PC's and netbooks all work together. And actually quite easy.
But who pays for 'your' device and who pays for the cross platform support?

[secrets in symmetry]

My work pays for my laptop, I pay for my phone - although not a lot.

A lot of what I do is web based, so largely machine independent. Email is easy to set up on any machine once you've done it on one. I use a lot of public domain software, which is (much) the same on all machines.

I realise that things will be very difficult in a commercial enterprise, and it's a nightmare for IT teams to support non technical employees using their own PCs when they don't know what they're doing, but the laissez faire system can work well when the end user is IT literate.

[Gronnuck]

Out of interest where are you secrets in symmetry? This would be great once all the glitches are sorted out but I can't see everyone embracing the idea and getting it working across the whole of the UK until we get increased broadband speeds. Some of us are still only working with 350 Kbps so any investment in equipment isn't worthwhile!

[_Ju_]

Depends on what information you are dealing with in work. How can you secure all the personal devices for sensitive data? It is already difficult when use is restricted to authorised devices.

[RecQuery]

I've seen this in the tech news for the past few weeks. I disagree with the idea on the large scale. People in IT departments or related disciplines (developers, designers etc) already do this, but to roll it out to everyone would be too much hassle. The environment being managed would no longer be as homogeneous as it currently is, support would be difficult as they have to do for people who know more than one thing and lots of IT people are just Windows monkeys or people with paper certs that follow a guide, rolling out updates and definitions would become more difficult. You couldn't lock things down as well, network configuration would become more difficult, it would present a bigger attack vector for nefarious people, privacy and data protection would be major issues. All of these have various knock-ons too. Lots of IT departments are already working at capacity trying to fight budget buts and being asked to perform miracles (do things instantaneously with no budget and no decent technical skill because they're already too cheap to pay for it).

This is a major security, privacy and management concern in my opinion.

I suppose the one advantage is that it promote open standards, free and open source software and interoperability.

EDIT: The only way I'd allow it is if it was on a departmental level and I could segment that department into its own VLAN. IT would not be responsible for any screws up you make, you'd have to VPN into the corporate network or use something web-based. All IT would guarantee would be network connectivity. I'd use MAC address authorisation or something similar to kill the network port if you tried to plug your unmanaged device into anything on the corporate network. If you did want us to fix something extra they we'd have to do internal cost centre charging or get money from your budget or something.

[secrets in symmetry]

I've seen this in the tech news for the past few weeks. I disagree with the idea on the large scale. People in IT departments or related disciplines (developers, designers etc) already do this, but to roll it out to everyone would be too much hassle. The environment being managed would no longer be as homogeneous as it currently is, support would be difficult as they have to do for people who know more than one thing and lots of IT people are just Windows monkeys or people with paper certs that follow a guide, rolling out updates and definitions would become more difficult. You couldn't lock things down as well, network configuration would become more difficult, it would present a bigger attack vector for nefarious people, privacy and data protection would be major issues. All of these have various knock-ons too. Lots of IT departments are already working at capacity trying to fight budget buts and being asked to perform miracles (do things instantaneously with no budget and no decent technical skill because they're already too cheap to pay for it).Yes, it would be very difficult to support non-technical people and those with less highbrow jobs.


This is a major security, privacy and management concern in my opinion.Yes, and we have a working group looking at this issue.


I suppose the one advantage is that it promote open standards, free and open source software and interoperability.Yes, it does that - to some extent. Firefox is the standard supported browser.


EDIT: The only way I'd allow it is if it was on a departmental level and I could segment that department into its own VLAN. IT would not be responsible for any screws up you make, you'd have to VPN into the corporate network or use something web-based. All IT would guarantee would be network connectivity. I'd use MAC address authorisation or something similar to kill the network port if you tried to plug your unmanaged device into anything on the corporate network. If you did want us to fix something extra they we'd have to do internal cost centre charging or get money from your budget or something.That's pretty much what we do. The main network screams if you try to connect a device with an unknown MAC address - and it doesn't support WiFi at all.

Those of us with our own devices (or unsupported devices) use a less secure network, which supports both wired and wireless access. Wireless access is via WPA Enterprise, and there is a further level of authentication for most web services, etc. Wired access also requires authentication. Support is very limited, for the reasons you mention - but, to a first approximation, all we need is the network, together with web and ssh access to servers on the main network. Most of us are unix command line junkies anyway. :cool:

Somewhat surprisingly, we no longer need to use a VPN or web proxy to access most web services when using outside network connections such as home or 3G - web authentication is all that's required. Some services do require a VPN or a web proxy, and one or two are not available at all.

[secrets in symmetry]

Out of interest where are you secrets in symmetry? This would be great once all the glitches are sorted out but I can't see everyone embracing the idea and getting it working across the whole of the UK until we get increased broadband speeds. Some of us are still only working with 350 Kbps so any investment in equipment isn't worthwhile!I'm mainly talking about using personal devices at work, where ethernet and wireless LAN speeds shouldn't be slow even in rural situations. Mind you, I get really annoyed on the very rare occasions my home download speed drops below 10Mbps....


Depends on what information you are dealing with in work. How can you secure all the personal devices for sensitive data? It is already difficult when use is restricted to authorised devices.Agreed 100% - we are looking very carefully at this!

[George Brims]

I use a laptop at work, a pretty high-powered one that will handle the CAD program I use. It sits in a docking station so I can have backup drive and a huge second display. End of the day I close it and slip it in the bag and take it home. So it does have a mix of personal and work stuff on it. Hard drive space is so big it's not an issue (as long as the boss doesn't realize it's got more personal than work data on it!). I use a simple program (SyncToy) to make sure I am keeping my portable backup drive and my own home-based machine in sync on the personal files.
As for smart phones I have about as much desire for one of those as a fish has for a bicycle. If I am not at my computer I am not interested in receiving email, and a simple phone with a half decent camera is all I need otherwise.
Not to inflame the PC vs Mac debate, but our IT guy reckons an excessive amount of his time is spent making PC software work on Macs with whatever emulator is popular right now.

[billmoseley]

i have great trouble using my laptop at work, i find balancing it on the steering wheel is very tricky and i can never get the mouse to work then theres the problem of controling the bus at the same time is very difficult

[RecQuery]

Yes, it would be very difficult to support non-technical people and those with less highbrow jobs.

Yes, and we have a working group looking at this issue.

Yes, it does that - to some extent. Firefox is the standard supported browser.

That's pretty much what we do. The main network screams if you try to connect a device with an unknown MAC address - and it doesn't support WiFi at all.

Those of us with our own devices (or unsupported devices) use a less secure network, which supports both wired and wireless access. Wireless access is via WPA Enterprise, and there is a further level of authentication for most web services, etc. Wired access also requires authentication. Support is very limited, for the reasons you mention - but, to a first approximation, all we need is the network, together with web and ssh access to servers on the main network. Most of us are unix command line junkies anyway. :cool:

Somewhat surprisingly, we no longer need to use a VPN or web proxy to access most web services when using outside network connections such as home or 3G - web authentication is all that's required. Some services do require a VPN or a web proxy, and one or two are not available at all.

I need to be clear that this is not a power or control issue, as long as everything works and what people are doing doesn't interfere with what I'm doing I don't really care what websites they look that, what they download, if they're playing games or watching porn or whatever. It's when I have to do malware removal or the external connection drags to a crawl, or a server is attacked, or something is deleted from a file share etc that I care.

If a few caveats and policies were established. Like reserving the right cut off your network access if your spewing out traffic even if your in the middle of an important presentation or demo. Or establishing that you will not blame the IT department/Guy for lost or leaked data or when your device is broken and you can't do your job. And with the understanding that fixing your personal devices takes the lowest priority even below ongoing project work and research then I'd probably be okay with it. I'd at least be willing to run a test case. There may also be some potential liabilities with licensing or people using a company connection for dodgy things but they could probably be worked out.

Obviously a lot of this depends on the type of user. In addition to IT people I generally find that anyone with a science or engineering background (with some exceptions) is usually better technically anyway so I would give those people more leeway until they screwed up a few time at least. Anyone with decent terminal/shell/command line knowledge is usually safe also. The type of company and sensitivity of the data might alter this too.


...Not to inflame the PC vs Mac debate, but our IT guy reckons an excessive amount of his time is spent making PC software work on Macs with whatever emulator is popular right now.

I suspect a lot of that is due to bad developers and doing things like using proprietary OS APIs. Even big companies are guilty(mainly because they're cheap) lots of CRM applications for instance require IE6.

You could just give everyone a VMs with alternate installs but that would probably increase licensing costs depending on the OS. If it's doable via some terminal services or thin client setup that might work also.

[Bobinovich]

Out of interest where are you secrets in symmetry? This would be great once all the glitches are sorted out but I can't see everyone embracing the idea and getting it working across the whole of the UK until we get increased broadband speeds. Some of us are still only working with 350 Kbps so any investment in equipment isn't worthwhile!

This self same reason I'm not happy with the huge surge towards cloud computing yet - everything's fine until your Internet goes down!!!

[secrets in symmetry]

I need to be clear that this is not a power or control issue, as long as everything works and what people are doing doesn't interfere with what I'm doing I don't really care what websites they look that, what they download, if they're playing games or watching porn or whatever. It's when I have to do malware removal or the external connection drags to a crawl, or a server is attacked, or something is deleted from a file share etc that I care.Even a liberal interpretation of our rules wouldn't permit watching porn at work lol, but the rest sounds reasonable.


If a few caveats and policies were established. Like reserving the right cut off your network access if your spewing out traffic even if your in the middle of an important presentation or demo. Or establishing that you will not blame the IT department/Guy for lost or leaked data or when your device is broken and you can't do your job. And with the understanding that fixing your personal devices takes the lowest priority even below ongoing project work and research then I'd probably be okay with it. I'd at least be willing to run a test case. There may also be some potential liabilities with licensing or people using a company connection for dodgy things but they could probably be worked out.Again, that's pretty much the way the system works at my work. The IT support team don't guarantee us any support other than providing a network connection, plus access to servers and printers on the core network. They might help out if they're interested, or if they're not overstretched.

A central backup system for IT recalcitrants (such as myself) would be useful, but we survive without it. Most of us have an external hard drive for backups - which is ok, but it's not exactly brimming with built-in redundancy! Linux and Mac laptop users generally use either Unison or rsync scripts for synchronising between our laptops and the main Linux servers. I have a few makefiles that do backups, but they don't make me sandwiches! I have no idea what the Windows laptop users do....


Obviously a lot of this depends on the type of user. In addition to IT people I generally find that anyone with a science or engineering background (with some exceptions) is usually better technically anyway so I would give those people more leeway until they screwed up a few time at least. Anyone with decent terminal/shell/command line knowledge is usually safe also. The type of company and sensitivity of the data might alter this too.Agreed - on all counts.