Research Spotlight: Understanding BYOD

The Guild has published a number of useful articles and papers thatdescribe the “bring your own device” (BYOD) trend rapidly overtaking thelearning and development field. The purpose of our newest white paper—Understanding BYOD: A Guide to Concepts and Issues for Learning Practitioners—is tobuild on those resources and provide learning leaders and practitioners anupdated guide to understanding current BYOD concepts and issues, withparticular emphasis on how these impact learning and development leaders andpractitioners.

An inescapable reality

In 2013, a landmark study by Cisco found that 90 percent of full-time workers in the United States used their personal smartphonesfor work purposes. The authors of the study went on to observe: “It’s a staggering finding that validates a trendindustry experts have been debating forseveral years now: Bring Your Own Device or BYOD. The consumerization of this technology has given the modern workerenormous work flexibility, while giving ITdepartments substantial headaches.”

Many of us in theL&D field have tended to view these headaches around BYOD as largely aconcern for the IT community and data security specialists. However, given theinescapable reality that much, if not most, of our learning content is nowdigitized and delivered over global networks through a wide variety of devices,we can no longer remain on the conceptual and policy-making sidelines of BYOD.

Some facts and predictions

Here are some basic facts, figures, and predictionsregarding the use of BYOD within business and learning environments.

• Gartner Research predicts that by2018, more than 50 percent of users (read learners)will turn to a tablet or smartphone first for all online activities. 
• A2014 survey from Tech Pro Research revealed that 74percent of organizations already allow employees to bring their own devices towork, or are at least planning for this to happen.
• In a blog post for TechRepublic, Scott Mattesonquotes Gartner research that predicts BYOD will become more of a requirementthan a privilege. Matteson writes, “The days of employees bringing theiriPhones and iPads into the office begging for them to be hooked up are over. Infact, if anything workers will start seeing companies requesting or evenmandating that they use their own devices for company work.”
• A2015 post by Springwise, a research curator, does a good jobof summarizing the topic, as follows:

“There are strong incentives for businesses to invest inemployee-facing apps and encourage their workforce to use their own devices. But understanding and minimizing the … risksis pivotal for any success in doing so [italics added]. While each challenge will take work—whether writing up new rulesfor device management or upgrading IT systems—the only risk not worth taking iseschewing the BYOD opportunity altogether.”

Information technology consumerization

To provide a broader context, BYOD is part of the larger trend known as IT consumerization. In thistrend, personal devices are increasingly being brought into the businessworkplace and used interchangeably for work and personal interests, oftenregardless of the employer’s policies.

For the past several years, IT trade journals andtechnical publications have featured articles warning of the numerous legal,security, privacy, and employee engagement issues that emerge from this trendof “blending” uses. At the same time, CIOs and IT professionals havebeen grappling with device management issues and implementing sophisticated mobile device management(MDM) platforms to deal with the security implications of BYOD.Legal firms have also issued opinions and recommendations regarding the risks,legal exposure, and policy requirements of BYOD practices.

Although it might seem as though such technical oresoteric topics as IT consumerization, MDM, mobile application management(MAM), virtual private network (VPN), and BYOD are outside the realm of requiredknowledge for today’s learning leaders and practitioners, that is no longer thecase. In fact, key to a solid understanding of BYOD is identifying bothpositive and less positive aspects of this trend.

Note: In the white paper we provide a glossary of BYOD-relatedterms as well as more detailed definitions of concepts such as MDM, MAM, andVPN, to name just a few.

The upside of BYOD

In a recentissue of CIO Magazine, Sarah K. White reports that manycompanies clearly recognize the upside of BYOD and have already accepted BYOD as areality. As a result, these companies’ “challenge now is striking a balancebetween security and flexibility.”

The white paperprovides a detailed discussion of the benefits and opportunities associatedwith BYOD. Here, we will only cover satisfaction and productivity—which manyregard as the most important benefits of BYOD.

It is clear from the research that employees increasinglyrecognize an upside to BYOD. A survey from Software Advice foundthat employees view BYOD positively for several reasons, as excerpted here:

• Better productivity. Employees feel they get more work done when using their personal device.
• More flexibility. Employees can combine their work and personal lives, and access work content from anywhere.
• More utility. Employees may require specific functions that are better provided by their personal device.
• More familiarity. Employees may prefer the interface or operating system of their personal device.

Of course, BYODdevices in the hands of users, employees, and learners can lead to potential increases in productivity and createopportunities to expand and enrich the “anywhere, anytime” learning experience.However, along with those opportunities come significant challenges, including datasecurity risks that may have severe legal ramifications.

Challenges and issues

Entire books havebeen written about the numerous challenges, issues, pitfalls, and genuinedangers of allowing employees to bring their own devices into the workplace anduse them behind a secure firewall.

The white paperdiscusses a broader range of issues that need to be considered with BYOD usage,and also provides detailed resources for additional reading materials, reports,and websites that provide a more complete picture of the subject. Here, webriefly explore two of challenges associated with BYOD.

Employee pushback

The firstchallenge is that of dealing with the employee pushback that often accompaniesan employer’s attempts to establish a program to manage BYOD. The Bitglass surveyBYOD Security: 2015 Rise of the Employeesfound that a majority of the2,000 individuals included in the survey had a negative response to attempts atmobile device management. The authors of the study prefaced their findings withthis observation:

“BringYour Own Device (BYOD) and mobility have completely transformed the way that ITdepartments provision devices to employees. The first attempt at providingsecure mobility was to control and lock down devices via enterprise mobilitysolutions like Mobile Device Management (MDM) or Mobile Application Management(MAM). Unfortunately, employees frequently reject these solutions as toooppressive or too invasive into personal privacy. The result is that millionsof dollars are spent on MDM/MAM solutions for BYOD programs that never achieveanticipated broad adoption. So will BYOD be relegated to the dustbin or does itsimply need a fresh approach?”

Furthermore, their research yielded the followinginsights, excerpted here:

• A total of 57 percent of end users (and38 percent of IT professionals) do not participate in a company BYOD programbecause they do not want IT departments to have visibility into their personaldata and applications.
• IT and employees agree—67 percent ofemployees would participate in a BYOD program if employers had the ability toprotect corporate data, but could not view, alter, or delete personal data andapplications. A total of 64 percent of IT professionals believe such a solutionwould make their BYOD program more successful.
• MAM is dead on arrival. Despite a hugepush by enterprise mobility management vendors, only 9 percent of organizationshave deployed a MAM solution. Violations of application licensing agreementsand fragile “wrapping” approaches have softened the impact of MAM.

The survey authors concluded that employees are increasingly “fed up withintrusive BYOD programs” and are refusing to share personal data with theircompanies. They recommend that IT teams “come to terms with reality”and better understand that “participation in BYOD programs is low becauseemployees are worried about IT control over personal devices.”

Legal liability and exposure

The second challenge is a rather frightening one. Regardlessof all else we may know about BYOD, we know that bringing personal devices intothe workplace—regardless of policy or personal use—is rife with potential legal exposure for both users andemployers. Library shelves are full of books and legal opinions about the legaland illegal use of personal devices and mobile devices inside or outside theworkplace. Here we will only briefly review the legal issues of BYOD.

A US legal firm specializingin security and privacy has summarized key points of relevant federal guidance for BYOD security. According to the firm, theseguidelines—availablefrom the National Institute of Standards and Technology website—specify“six high-level recommendationsthat enterprises should address to securely deploy and manage mobile devices”(excerpted as follows). Organizations should:

• Have a mobile device security policy that defines the types of devices permitted, the resources that may be accessed, and how provisioning is handled. (According to Techopedia, a BYOD policy “is used to support the deployment of BYOD in an organization. An effective BYOD policy facilitates employee productivity in a flexible manner. For example, a company may manage and track employee devices through an MDM process, which involves setting up security for mobile devices and laptops to block intruders from breaking into a firewall or VPN.”)
• Develop system threat models for mobile devices and the resources that are accessed through mobile devices.
• Consider the merits of each provided security service, and determine which services are needed for the specific environment, and then design and acquire one or more solutions that collectively provide the necessary security services.
• Implement and test a pilot of their mobile device solution before putting the solution into production.
• Fully secure each organization-issued mobile device before allowing a user to access it.
• Regularly maintain mobile device security.

The white paper provides a basic understanding of the key benefits andchallenges of BYOD, and then takes a more detailed look at how these sameissues impact today’s learning leaders and practitioners. In particular, it seeksto examine why a solid understanding of responsive design principles andpractices provides learning practitioners with the best tool for dealing withBYOD implications.

Why learning practitioners need to understand BYOD

Throughout this white paper, we stress the point that learningpractitioners must have a solid understanding of BYOD, including all of itsadvantages and challenges, if they are to work successfully with otherstakeholders, IT professionals, and policy makers to bring coherence to today’smultiple-device learning environment.

The time has passed when learning practitioners could watchfrom the sidelines as numerous types of devices flooded the corporate andacademic learning space. No longer canlearning practitioners remain passively unaware, as they are overwhelmed withthe task of designing and deploying multiple versions of high-value contentacross a largely unsecured digital environment. Most importantly, L&D mustbe an equal partner with the organization’s IT and legal groups, and mustensure that the interests and concerns of learning practitioners are reflectedin BYOD policies and device management practices.

In addition to theBYOD issues discussed in this white paper, learning practitioners should have abasic understanding of guidelines and considerations most relevant to L&D,and be able to leverage that knowledge for stakeholder advocacy, contentstrategies, and design decisions.

See the white paperfor a detailed discussion of “BYOD Guidelines and Considerations” for learningpractitioners, and the importance of responsivelearning design, as this relates to a BYOD learning environment. Also notethat the Guild has published a substantial body of reference material,practical guidelines, and resources on the topics of BYOD and responsivedesign.

Source: GuildResearch, 2016  

Figure 1: Digitallearning devices

A good example is provided by one of our recent case studies. Thiscase described Rent-A-Center’s successful mLearning initiative and dealt withmany of the same issues regarding mobile devices (Figure 1), digital learning,and responsive design that are addressed in the BYOD white paper. Read the Learning Solutions Magazine article,which contains a link to the case study, SupportingMultiyear Business Transformation:Rent-A-Center’s Innovative Approach toMobile Learning and Performance Coaching.  

Looking forward to 2017

A recent blog post by Akuity Technologies predicts: “By 2017, half of employers will require theiremployees to buy their own devices.” The IT solutions company writes, “Though today’sworkers are clamoring for more BYOD, how will they react if it becomesmandatory, along with strict policies on security, device choice, and limitedor no stipends to purchase the technology and cover accompanying data charges?”

A 2017 goal for Guild Insights, the Guild’s research practice, is to gather more practicaldata and insights on the topic of BYOD. In particular, we want to understandhow well the members of the Guild community are managing BYOD in their learningenvironments, both corporate and academic. We also want to identify bestpractices and other practical guidelines that members of our community canapply to the challenges and opportunities of BYOD, in 2017 and beyond.

Pleaselook for more information about this forthcoming 2017 BYOD research study. Wesincerely hope you will participate and help eLearningprofessionals and Guild members worldwide—and, most importantly,yourself—better understand and navigate the evolving challenges of BYOD for thelearning environment.

References

Akuity Technologies. “Seven Stats About The Future of BYOD.”17 March 2014.
https://www.akuity.com/2014/03/17/seven-stats-about-the-future-of-byod/

Bitglass. BYODSecurity: 2015 Rise of the Employees.
https://pages.bitglass.com/Bitglass_BYOD_Security_report_2015.html

Borowski, Craig. BYOD’sEffect on the IT Help Desk Burden: IndustryView 2014. Software Advice. 18September 2014.
https://www.softwareadvice.com/crm/industryview/byod-help-desk-burden-2014/

Cisco. BYOD Insights2013: A Cisco Partner Network Study. March 2013.
https://iapp.org/media/pdf/knowledge_center/Cisco_BYOD_Insights_2013.pdf

Gartner. “Gartner Says By 2018, More Than 50 Percent ofUsers Will Use a Tablet or Smartphone First for All Online Activities.” 8December 2014.
https://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2939217

InfoLawGroup. “New Federal Guidance for BYOD SecurityReleased.” 26 June 2013.
https://www.infolawgroup.com/2013/06/articles/mobile/nist_sp800-124r1/

InfoLawGroup. “The Security, Privacy and Legal Implicationsof BYOD (Bring Your Own Device).” 28 March 2012.
https://www.infolawgroup.com/2012/03/articles/byod/the-security-privacy-and-legal-implications-of-byod-bring-your-own-device/

Maddox, Teena. “Research: 74 percent using or adoptingBYOD.” ZDNet. 5 January 2015.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/research-74-percent-using-or-adopting-byod/

Matteson, Scott. “10 ways BYOD will evolve in 2016.”TechRepublic: 10 Things Blog. 22 January 2016.
https://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10-things/10-ways-byod-will-evolve-in-2016/

Souppaya, Murugiah, and Karen Scarfone. Guidelines for Managing the Security of Mobile Devices in theEnterprise. National Institute of Standards and Technology, US Departmentof Commerce.
https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/SpecialPublications/NIST.SP.800-124r1.pdf

Springwise. “How ‘Bring Your Own Device’ Is Revolutionizingthe Workplace.” 22 July 2015.
https://www.springwise.com/bring-device-revolutionizing-workplace/

Vipond, Sharon. “Research Spotlight: Supporting MultiyearBusiness Transformation at Rent-A-Center.” LearningSolutions Magazine. 7 April 2016.
/articles/1940/?utm_campaign=lsmag&utm_medium=link&utm_source=lsmag

White, Sarah K. “How to implement an effective BYOD policy.”CIO Magazine. 26 September 2016.
https://www.cio.com/article/3124127/byod/how-to-implement-an-effective-byod-policy.html

Zaveri,Jay. “Rise of the ‘consumer enterprise.’” VentureBeat.24 June 2013.
https://venturebeat.com/2013/06/24/rise-of-the-consumer-enterprise/