Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Planning on BYOD?

BYOD (device or desktop)

Bring your own device is both scary and exciting for most people, certainly for most IT managers and CIOs. I should start with the (what should be obvious) BYOD is not a money saver, it is a technology enabler. It is to build better collaboration for a single person – someone traveling, using a work desktop, an IPAD, a home computer etc or for a group of users in a collaborative group.

Plan BYOD for the right reasons.

  1. Decide what you will support, will it go to devices? No, that is too specific and will date. Will it go to OS level, No, that will be wrong soon too. Just set some level of requirements, it must support passwords, auto password change, remote wipe etc. Then you can support any device today or future.
  2. Determine what these shiny new devices can do? Will they connect to the LAN? Will they get a private WLAN? Can they access the intranet, internet, email, VPN etc etc? Maybe it is best to abstract them from the ‘real’ assets and keep them accessing services via Citrix or RDP? Will they authenticate with a CERT? Maybe an AD logon?
  3. Determine the support you will offer, will you connect them to the network, install software, do the owners take responsibility? will you encourage or just tolerate the weird and wonderful knock-off tablets? Don't go to far, you can always go further but you cant go back !
  4. Formalise the plans, the guides, the operations documentation, the security risks, VPN or network controls, IPSEC and routing these the devices. Maybe NAP and NAC have a future on the network if the devices can be managed?
  5. Review the plan and execution after the first 50 devices and see what you got right and wrong. Then fix it.

It does not have to be a problem, it is just another opportunity.

1 comment:

Jeff said...

don't forget who pays for the licenses, like VDA, TSCAL, etc and android/ios apps that cost money. is it acceptable for a staff member to claim on expenses the appstore costs back to a cost centre ?

good post Dave :)

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