CIO.com is reporting on a recent survey by Gartner which claims that 10% of a firm’s laptop computers are employee-owned. The research firm says that companies are starting to let employees use privately owned laptops for work purposes, according to a survey of 500 IT managers in the U.S., U.K., and Germany. The IT managers said they expect that percentage to creep higher next year.
Gartner says that some employees like the trend because it means they can have more powerful laptops and newer designs than their companies’ IT departments offer. The survey found that 47% of workplaces have banned employee-owned PCs, 43% have policies that allow the use of employee-owned PCs for work-related purposes, and 10% have no policy on the matter.
Gartner believes this trend is popular with employers because of cost. When employees bring their own hardware to work, and the employer doesn’t pay for it or support it.
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Who was Gartner interviewing? What regulated firm (SOX, PCI, HIPPA, etc.) would allow unknown devices on their internal network. This trend needlessly exposes the company to malware and data theft risks. We encourage our clients to go in the opposite direction. We talk to them, write and enforce policies to ban personal devices like USB drives and iPods for the data theft risk. We also suggest they get control of their remote access and private email on the corporate network.
This really seems to be a lax policy in this age of cyber-crime because privately owned hardware could open the door for a hacker.
What do you think?
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.