IT managers struggle to cope with BYOD environments

Most IT managers do not have strategy in place for dealing with employees who bring their own devices to work.

That’s according to a new survey from LANDesk which found that companies are still struggling to control bring your own device (BYOD) environments.

According to the survey, 77 percent of companies bring their personal devices to the office but 54 percent of managers do not have sufficient strategies in place to deal with this. The survey paints a picture of end users adopting devices at an unprecedented pace. Ninety-six percent of IT manager said that their employees were using two or more computing devices in the workplace – even though only 75 percent had policies to manage multiple devices.

A lack of appropriate security policy means that organisations are increasingly vulnerable. Thirty-seven percent of the survey’s respondents said they dealt with at least 10 malware incidents every month – although the research did not find a causal connection between this and a BYOD policy.

Companies need to be prepared for such a seismic shift in working methods.“Virtually everything we read in the press and hear firsthand from our customers, points to the fact that IT is on the cusp of a radical change, and end user computing will never be the same,” said Steve Workman, vice president, LANDesk.

He said that IT managers could not return to working practices of old. “The days of provisioning and maintaining a single computing platform, locking down work environments and mandating productivity systems are dead.  This survey of mobile device management drives these points home.  We surveyed a cross section of IT managers and administrators, and their feedback shows the dramatic nature of this shift and emphasises the immediacy of the change.”