Is BYOD worrying you yet?

Among the latest buzzwords in the IT industry is the phrase BYOD.  It stands for Bring Your Own Device and refers the burgeoning number of devices that employees are bringing into the office from home and attaching to the organization's network.  It includes tablets, smart phones and home laptops.  It's estimated by one analyst group that the average employee will own seven internet connected devices by 2015.

If the security risk of putting non-corporate owned devices on the network hasn't got you worried, think about the increased traffic trying to access the internet.  If your employee only had one device and by 2015 they'll have seven, that's a significant bandwidth increase requirement for your infrastructure.

And of course we shouldn't toss aside security so quickly.  Since these devices don't have any mandates from the corporate IT department on them, and have accessed networks other than the corporate ones, they're likely targets for malware, not to mention data loss.

The other fun statistic I saw recently was that it's estimated the average smartphone has 65 applications installed on it.  That's an incredible number.  Who has time to use 65 different applications?  And what if any controls does the corporate IT department have over what applications can do and access?

So if you haven't started a BYOD initiative in your IT department, it's really time you started.  It's more than just the web gateway security issues, but that's not a bad place to start.