Mobile device management and BYOD

[jaymaechtlen]

I'm working on IT security policies for mobile devices - user-owned and business-owned.
Would you use the same management software for both?
Would you permit the same levels of access for both?
Do you permit personal data on business-owned devices?

Thanks for any insights or opinions.
Regards
Jay

 

[MikeHalloran]

The last place I worked provided company owned Blackberries to some, not me.
They absolutely would not allow access via my then new iPhone 3.

They absolutely would not allow access to YouTube over their network, which severely crippled my ability to learn Solidworks, their CAD program, which has many useful tutorials hosted on YouTube. No exceptions.

I have no idea how they managed the network.
The business was run on multiple levels of simulation that allowed use of a 1972-ish POS system (read that both ways) written in some ancient IBM language, extensively patched and extended over many years by many people, and so far as anyone knew, completely undocumented. Polite criticism brought a curt response telling me to sign up for the training course, which so far as I could tell, did not exist. None of the current users had training material, or had themselves been trained in any formal way, other than watching older users execute odd keystroke sequences that had been shown to be useful for particular business tasks.

Everyone referred to the company software scornfully as 'The AS/400 System'. I was told that it actually ran on modern IBM hardware using some form of Linux. The IT staff privately asserted that since the software had been unmaintainable for decades, they wanted to replace it, and were waiting for the cranky old fart in charge to die.

The entire IT staff has since been discharged and replaced with former minions.
The cranky old fart is still there.

 

[jaymaechtlen]

I think IBM's AS/400 was current 20+ years ago. But may be much cheaper to run it emulated on modern hardware than to rewrite it.
Seems to me that one of IBM's current supported environment is a version/form of Linux.

The IT shop at one of my former employers is run by a guy who is - not young.
But they seem to run a pretty good shop - at least in terms of security, documentation, and user support.
I'm using a lot of what I learned there on this project.
cheers
Jay