IT expert: 5-year-plan necessary to address consumerization of IT

The Bring Your Own Device trend has placed a significant amount of pressure on IT departments that were less worried about mobile device management when employers supplied workers with company mobile devices, as opposed to allowing them to use personal devices for business purposes.

According to a recent ITWorld article, the BYOD trend has brought a new set of challenges to IT departments around the world, but is also viewed as a positive development, increasing efficiency by maximizing workers' flexibility. IT professionals are therefore motivated to protect mobile devices from malware and other hacker attacks that could compromise company data.

Andrew Fox, a mobile security professional, believes the first step for CIOs is to sort out their device management layer, adding that there is a huge difference between people having email and internet available and actually enforcing an effective management system.

Fox said that companies need to spend time researching and coming up with a mobile strategy for the entire business in the next three to five years to keep security systems up-to-date and secure from attacks that are beginning to become more prevalent. He said one of the most important things for businesses will be to make IT support more integrated into the workplace, rather than cordoned off behind a help desk. He said IT specialists will have to be able to speak the language of a sales team, for example, to provide real-time support to workers using mobile devices in the field.

Fox dates the significant rise in BYOD to the holiday season two years ago, when many chief executives and board members of companies received iPads as gifts. The result was executives who wanted IT departments to configure their device for business purposes. Since that time, the consumerization of IT has only accelerated.

"Smartphones and tablets are here to stay on company networks," said Raj Sabhlok, a mobile device security expert. "Tablet sales alone are projected to be in the hundreds of millions each year for the next several years, and budding movements such as Bring Your Own Device just further entrench and complicate security, bandwidth use, and asset management in the enterprise."

According to a recent survey on mobile device use in the workplace, 88 percent of the respondents reported they use personal computing devices for business purposes, which is a significant figure that companies should direct their attention to, considering viruses and malware can interrupt a company's network and lead to data loss.