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Bring your own device - don't get excited yet

I have been hearing more and more IT department and companies suggest that the days when they used to manage or control the company assets is over and it is time to allow people to bring your own device.  The possible savings from those companies who are trying to save every penny seem worth it, possible reduction in hardware costs, maintenance costs, support/helpdesk could be reduced (assuming you rely on the users themselves to build and configure their own devices).

Along with the possible savings though there is a certain amount of risk that you have to be able to manage or establish controls to prevent breaches based on your new open door paradigm.

  1. Asset management - a lot of IT people will scoff and say we don't manage the assets (well) now so this isn't much of a change.  The current environment in many places has a limited set of operating systems, patch levels, software, and configurations.  This is helpful in troubleshooting when you have an unexpected event occur, or if you need to identify a system that is behaving strangely.  What controls would you use to mitigate this?
  2. Software management - again in the current standard IT environment you can only load certain software, and usually the company handles the software licensing (and is liable in the event that the software licenses are misused, etc.).  This can end up to be a real cost/risk to a business (companies like HP, Microsoft, IBM, and Oracle often will require annual audits to verify compliance with software licenses).  How do you manage software licenses? would you required software management tools on the systems that your users bring in? are they any legal or privacy issues with managing what is installed on a system that is not owned by the company?
  3. Configuration management - again the current idea is that systems are centrally built to a specification by a professional IT department that understand the infrastructure requirements, software compatibility issues, etc. this creates an "image" that reduces the risk of failures, compatibility issues, and security risks.  What is the way you would manage this?  how would you mange what operating systems are deployed, in what configuration, and how would you be able to assess your company risk posture or find out where/if you have a data leakage issue?  
Maybe these are only issues for companies with data that is worth protecting (like financial data, health care data, intellectual property, trade secrets, etc.) if you work for a company that has nothing of value, then this might be a great idea - everyone else needs to seriously assess the risks that a policy like this exposes your company to.

Here is the article that got me thinking about this again:
Article

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