Majority Of European Businesses ‘ Still Don’t Trust BYOD ‘

Despite promising a wide range of advantages, including flexible working and improved connectivity, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) schemes are still being viewed with suspicion by many companies, research has found.

A pan-European study of over 1,100 businesses carried out by HP discovered that many organisations are still mistrustful of BYOD, especially when it comes to the security of such initiatives.

Half of respondents contacted by the company admitted to being concerned that such a policy would compromise their organisation’s security. Of those companies surveyed that had a BYOD policy in place, 20 percent reported that they had been hit by at least one security breach in the last year, with two percent suffering more than five BYOD-related breaches in the same period.

Connected

Questions were also raised as to the need for company-wide upgrades to a full BYOD policy, despite

The survey found that just under a quarter (24 percent) of IT decision makers believed their company was already well-equipped for mobile working, and only eight per cent thought that their company was not equipped at all.

Many of the organisations questioned also stated that they believed desktop and notebook PCs would continue to play a major role in the office of the future, despite the survey predicting that the use of tablets and smartphones is expected to see a17 percent and 11 percent increase, respectively, by 2020

Despite there now being more mobile device options available than ever before, IT decision makers believe that desktop PCs will remain the dominant hardware for businesses, with almost half of employees (46 per cent) expected to still use them by 2020. Similarly, the use of notebooks is expected to be 29 per cent in 2020, the same as present levels.

“Enabling remote working is beneficial for both companies and their employees, bringing greater flexibility to the workplace and allowing seamless service whether an employee is at work, at home or on the go,” said James Morrish, chief technologist, printing and personal systems, HP UK & Ireland.

“To meet the mobility demands of end users in a secure way, CIOs must implement the IT policies that will work best for their organisation.”

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