Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is quickly catching up in the workplace as an emerging practice for affording employees the freedom to work on their own devices while helping companies cut IT costs and management burdens significantly. Research firm Forrester’s (News - Alert) study of U.S. information workers revealed that 37 percent are doing something with technology before formal permissions or policies are instituted. Likewise, a Gartner (News - Alert) CIO survey determined that 80 percent of employees will be eligible to use their own equipment with employee data on board by 2016.

BYOD brings its own set of challenges in the work environment and will never deliver on the promises of streamlined management and cost savings without a well-written policy and a robust management platform, according to mobile device management (MDM) provider Fiberlink.

With rapid proliferation of BYOD, the important question is how to keep the environment productive and secure while protecting corporate data. Fiberlink has the answer. For that, the Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) provider has generated a white paper entitled “The Ten Commandments of BYOD.” It ensures peace, security and productivity in a mobile enterprise environment.

‘The Ten Commandments’ include:

Create Thy Policy Before Procuring Technology: According to Fiberlink, to effectively leverage BYOD technology, the companies must generate policies that take into consideration its effects on HR, legal and security. It cannot be created in an IT vacuum.

Enrollment Shall Be Simple: Once the company identifies mobile devices to enroll, the BYOD program should leverage technology that allows for an easy way for users to enroll. The process should be simple, secure and configure the device at the same time.

Thou Shalt Configure Devices Over-the Air: All devices should be configured over-the air to maximize efficiency for both IT and business users alike.

Give Thy Users Self-Service: A robust self-service platform lets users directly perform PIN and password resets in the event that the employee forgets the current one, geo-locate a lost device from a Web portal, using mapping integration and wipe a device remotely, removing all sensitive corporate data.

Hold Sacred Personal Information: Besides protecting corporate data, a well-crafted BYOD program also holds employee data sacred and secure.

Part the Seas of Corporate and Personal Data: For BYOD to be an agreement both IT and end users can live with, personal information should be isolated from productivity apps.

To learn the rest of the commandments and other best practices about BYOD, be sure to download the whitepaper.

To help companies generate a well written policy and a platform for BYOD devices, Fiberlink has created a MDM platform called MaaS360. According to Fiberlink, MaaS360 offers a quick and easy way to get devices configured for enterprise access while securing corporate data on smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices. It offers an easy-to-use interface that displays enterprise information on users, devices and applications, cuts device and application management time to a minimum and offers maximum visibility of activity and status.

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