BYOD is a good thing for organizations both in and outside of the IT industry. People who bring their own device to work might drastically slash the cost of maintaining and refreshing every employee’s machine. Because the employee owns the item, the manufacturer’s warranty usually takes care of repairs. The problems generally begin when organizations try to figure out how to secure it.

Security is viewed as the biggest problem with BYOD. However, BYOD has brought a lot of other unexpected consequences to the forefront, for everyone from the CIO all the way down to the IT managers. Today, I’ll outline the top unexpected consequences of BYOD, explain SHI’s approach to combating those issues, and go over some tips for customers who are trying to implement an effective BYOD strategy in their organizations.

• Securing hundreds of mobile devices. The explosion of the iPad and other mobile devices has caused a major issue for employers. The last time I counted, there were over 100 new tablets added to the market over the past few years. People bringing their own device into the work environment are allowing company data to reside on their devices. With that comes the risk of employees losing their phone, which automatically puts the company at a huge liability. The solution to this is to employ a mobile device manager (MDM). Once installed on a device, it can remotely wipe all the company-owned data from mobile devices.

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