BYOD goes mainstream: Formalising consumerisation— and getting it under control

Broadly speaking, BYOD can be defined as any strategy that allows people to use their own devices, whether occasionally, primarily or exclusively, for work. Many organisations allow people to supplement their corporate-owned machine(s) with additional devices—smartphones, tablets, laptops, home PCs—as needed for optimal flexibility, mobility and productivity. Some go further and eliminate certain corporate-owned device types entirely for eligible employees who prefer to use their own devices instead; in some cases, a stipend is provided to help defray the employee’s costs. Contractors are increasingly required to use their own devices rather than being provided with corporate-owned equipment. Ideally, an organisation’s practices around BYOD should be detailed in a formal policy.

The reality is that many people are already bringing their own devices to work, regardless of whether the organisation has a BYOD policy in place. The current average number of devices connecting to the corporate network is 5.18 per knowledge worker—4.43 devices across all workers—and predicted to rise to almost six devices by 2020.1 In part, this reflects a shift in the nature of the endpoint environment, as the dominance of traditional desktop PCs gives way to a wider range of options that let people choose the right mix of device mobility, performance, size and weight for their purposes, whether it be a laptop, tablet or smartphone.

To date, BYOD has remained an informal practice for many organisations. In the meantime, the lack of a more coherent approach to BYOD can leave the organisation exposed to risks from security and compliance gaps to escalating IT complexity. As consumerisation continues its rapid rise, the need is clear for a complete BYOD strategy, encompassing both policy and technology.

From a technological perspective, the most obvious question is how people will be able to access enterprise applications and business information on their personal devices. Simply installing apps directly on the device would raise serious security, privacy and compliance risks, licence management issues and support complications, as well as restricting BYOD to Windows-based devices—and leaving other consumer devices out of the picture. Many people have also started using unmanaged third-party apps and online services for work—IT teams need a way to control and manage this usage and prevent these apps from introducing security risks to the organisation.

The ideal approach is to enable completely device-independent computing through enterprise mobility management, Windows app and desktop virtualisation and secure file sharing, supplemented by online collaboration and remote support services. With this approach, IT departments can provide optimal freedom for people while maintaining security and control. People gain single-click secure access to all of their Windows, web, SaaS and mobile apps through a unified app store on any device, over any network, with single sign-on and seamless session roaming across locations, networks and devices. IT gains a single point of control to provision and de-provision apps of all types quickly, whether to provide new resources or to cut off access when it is no longer needed or appropriate. In most scenarios, business information remains secure in the datacenter; in cases where it has to reside on the endpoint, it is protected through isolation, encryption and remote wiping mechanisms.

In this way, IT can simplify management and reduce costs while empowering people to work easily, securely and seamlessly across any type of device, regardless of ownership. By leveraging the ability to granularly manage data, session and application information, sensitive data can be securely accessed on personally-owned devices. IT gains identity-based provisioning and control of apps, data and devices, automatic account de-provisioning for terminated users and selective wiping of lost devices.

BYOD policies can vary significantly from organisation to organisation depending on your priorities and concerns, and should be designed in consultation with HR, finance, legal and IT security teams. Guidelines and best practices for policy development appear in the following section.

Elements of complete BYOD strategy

A successful BYOD initiative combines simplicity for people with effective security, control and management for IT. While the temptation can be strong for IT teams to develop specific policies for every conceivable scenario, the reality is that most considerations can be addressed through the application of a few simple, consistent principles. In most cases, IT team can think about how to manage and provide people secure access to applications, data and files, complemented with role-based management, configuration and security of personally-owned devices to protect the organisation against threats, data loss and non-compliant usage.

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Organisations should make clear who in the organisation is allowed to use personal devices, whether on an ad hoc basis to supplement a corporate endpoint, as a permanent replacement for a corporate device or anything in between. This can be seen as a privilege to be earned, a response to employee demand, a requirement for certain types of roles, an excessive risk for some use cases or, most likely, a combination of these things. “In keeping with our open workplace philosophy, Citrix allows anyone to bring in any type of device for work with no restrictions,” says Paul Martine, chief information officer at Citrix.

Programmes that involve the replacement of a corporate endpoint with a personally-owned device, often with a stipend provided to the employee, involve their own set of considerations. One way to determine who should be eligible for this type of programme is to apply criteria such as worker type, frequency of travel, performance or whether an individual requires offline access to sensitive data. “At Citrix, anyone who has already been determined to be eligible for a laptop can participate and receive the appropriate stipend to replace their corporate device, provided they have manager approval,” says Shawn Genoway, senior director of IT at Citrix. However eligibility is defined on a broad level, managers should always have final approval over which team members are appropriate candidates to receive a stipend to replace their corporate device with one of their own choosing. Managers can also be advised to apply BYOD within the context of other departmental incentives, privileges and disciplinary measures.

Contractors are generally ideal candidates for BYOD. Many organisations already expect contractors to bring their own devices, and requiring them to do so aids independent contractor compliance.

Allowed devices

In a scenario where applications are installed directly on endpoints, IT departments have to determine and mandate minimum specifications for OS and application support, performance and other device-specific criteria. Desktop virtualisation eliminates these considerations by making it possible to run a full Windows desktop and applications on any kind of device. With enteprise mobility management, IT departments can enrol and manage any device, detect jailbroken devices and perform a full or selective wipe of a device that is out of compliance, lost, stolen or belongs to a departed employee or contractor. At Citrix, where people bring in any device they choose, there are already over two thousand personally-owned laptops and nearly two thousand personally-owned tablets in use throughout the organisation, in addition to over four thousand personallyowned smartphones including iOS and Android devices used for everything from email to full application access via Citrix Receiver.

Participants should be required to buy their personal devices through normal consumer channels rather than an organisation’s purchasing department. This helps maintain clear lines of ownership as well as ensures that participants have a direct relationship with their hardware vendor. You may want to make employee discounts available to them, if covered under your corporate vendor relationships. Some people may need or wish to supplement their device with peripheral equipment such as monitors or keyboards while at the office. In this scenario, make sure to specify who will procure and own each item.

Service availability

BYOD doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing proposition. You should think about the specific services you want to make available on personally-owned devices and whether this will differ for specific work groups, user types, device types and network utilised.

For people who want to install apps directly onto their computer for their personal use, organisations can consider offering employee discounts for Office Professional for Mac and PC through Microsoft Software Assurance. This way, licencing compliance is entirely the individual’s responsibility and the company can avoid risk or liability for violations.

Rollout

Once your BYOD initiative has been designed, communication is vital to successful implementation. People should receive guidance to help them decide whether to participate and how to choose the right device for their needs. They should also understand the responsibilities that come with bringing their own device, including how data can be accessed, used and stored. Work and business data should be kept strictly segregated on a personally-owned device to support e-discovery requirements and data retention policies; similarly, work emails should never be sent from personal accounts. Acceptable use policy should apply the same way on personally-owned devices as they do on corporate devices.

Cost sharing

One of the primary benefits of BYOD is the ability to reduce costs by having people pay part or all of the cost of various devices used for work, and getting the IT department out of the business of procuring and supporting an expanding array of hardware throughout the enterprise. This is especially true in cases where a corporate-owned laptop or device will no longer be provided. In a recent survey, the vast majority of organisations with a BYOD policy already in place or planned said they compensate employees who use their own devices for work purposes, either in part or in full. Providing compensation can also give organisations some control over consumerisation, a factor cited by 61 percent of those surveyed as the main reason for their stipend or financial contribution.

“The Citrix bring-your-own-computer programme, which allows people to replace their corporate device with a personal device, is designed to yield 18 – 20 percent savings,” says Martine. “This amount is discounted from the total cost of the standard corporate device that would otherwise be provided, including OS and three-year maintenance and warranty, plus estimated tax withholdings, to calculate the stipend provided.” Participants should also be aware that the stipend will be treated for tax purposes as income. In regions with higher personal income tax rates, you may want to increase the stipend accordingly to keep the net subsidy consistent for all participants. Any BYOD policy, with or without cost-sharing, should make clear who will pay for network access outside the corporate firewall, whether via 3G, public Wi-Fi or home broadband.

If you choose to provide a subsidy, it should reflect the full participation lifespan of each individual. Subsidies should be renewed at a regular interval, such as the typical three-year hardware refresh cycle, to ensure that personal devices do not age beyond what would be expected for an enterprise device. If a participant leaves the company during a BYOD cycle, you may want to reclaim a portion of the current stipend. At Citrix, people who leave the company or the programme within a year of enrolling in BYOD are responsible for repaying a pro-rated portion of their stipend.

Cost sharing has implications for the introduction of BYOD in the organisation. An all-at-once rollout can increase cost as people sign up—and claim their stipends— at all points in the endpoint refresh cycle. Offering the programme to people as they come to the end of their device lifecycle will spread out the impact, typically over three years. Organisations that do not offer a stipend can encourage full participation from day one.

Security and Compliance

Many CIOs worry that further consumerisation of IT will lead to greatly increased business risks. This is a reasonable concern, and one raised frequently by Citrix customers seeking guidance on BYOD. While the installation of applications directly on non-corporate devices can increase risk, a BYOD programme based on enterprise mobility management, Windows app and desktop virtualisation and secure file sharing manages and reduces risk. All business information remains secure within the datacenter, residing on the endpoint only when absolutely necessary. In cases where data does need to reside on the endpoint, it can be protected through isolation, encryption and remote wiping mechanisms. To prevent exfiltration, IT teams can implement policies to disable printing or access to clientside storage such as local drives and USB storage. Participants should also ensure that antivirus/anti-malware software is appropriately installed and updated on their endpoint. Citrix provides antivirus protection to employees participating in the BYOD programme at no cost to the employee.

On mobile devices, access to apps and data can be controlled, secured and managed with policies based on device ownership, status or location. IT teams can enrol and manage any device, detect jailbroken devices and perform a full or selective wipe of a device that is out of compliance, lost, stolen or belongs to a departed employee or contractor. Application security is ensured through secure application access via app tunnels, blacklisting, whitelisting and dynamic, context-aware policies.

To protect the enterprise network, some organisations apply network access control (NAC) technology to authenticate people connecting to the network and check whether their devices have up-to-date antivirus software and security patches. Citrix takes a different approach, allowing BYOD programme participants to use the Citrix network to access their on-demand data, apps and desktops through Citrix NetScaler Access Gateway, following two-factor authentication, but not allowing them to join the personally-owned device itself to the network. “This allows the least restriction on the individual’s personal device while ensuring the security of our network, and reflects the open computing culture at Citrix,” says Genoway. NetScaler Access Gateway can also be used to provide granular, policybased browser access to apps and data. Single sign-on and strong passwords allow both convenience and security.

Outside the firewall, virtualisation and encryption can allay most of the security vulnerabilities of Wi-Fi, WEP encryption, open wireless, 3G/4G and other consumer-grade access methods. Network security capabilities provide visibility into and protection against internal and external mobile threats; blocking of rogue devices, unauthorised users and non-compliant apps; and integration with security information and event management (SIEM) systems.

In the event that a BYOD participant leaves the organisation, BYOD policy is breached or a personally-owned device is lost or stolen, the IT department should have a mechanism to terminate access instantly to data and apps, including automatic de-provisioning of work-related SaaS accounts and selective wiping of lost devices.

Instead of allowing open BYOD approches, in which people can bring any device to access enterprise apps and data, some organisations choose a managed approach. In this scenario, IT manages the personally-owned device directly, including registration, validation, authorisation and device resource access.

Device support and maintenance

A BYOD programme often reduces the total maintenance required for each device because the user is also the owner. “As any rental car customer will attest, people treat their own equipment better than they do someone else’s. A personally-owned device is much less likely to show up at the IT department with salad dressing in the keyboard,” says Genoway.