The newest trends hitting the Silicon Valley is the BYOD initiative. It stands for “Bring Your Own Device” and it’s a theory on productivity that leverages an employee’s existing equipment for business purposes. Done properly, BYOD can greatly increase your output and keep your employees happy while they work. Done wrong and you can expect catastrophic consequences for your network. Before you let employees bring their own devices, be sure you have assessed the risks. Make proper allowances like a terminal server monitor to check traffic on the network. Protecting the data hosted by your corporation is a serious responsibility, and customers will react negatively to a breach of trust.

Effects on Productivity

The theory of BYOD states that employees are happier using devices they are already familiar with. Logic dictates that a person would want to separate work from home computers, but that is not actually the case in practice. BYOD offices do find that employees are more familiar with their own setups, and may be more likely to take care of a computer because it is their own. Employers also benefit from reduced costs of staffing an office. But be wary, not all the grass is greener.

Viral Protection

Employees who do protect their devices adequately are the exception, not the rule. As a result, employers must deal with intrusions on their networks that may come from off-site or from a device not on the corporate network. This sounds ok at first, it should be relatively simple to remove most infections, but your IT department is seriously unprepared for major issues on the network. If IT is an investigator, BYOD removes all evidence of the source of the attack and makes it difficult to prevent future intrusions.

Accessibility

Remote employees need access to their files, and BYOD encourages more employees to work remotely. When everything is saved to a home computer, employees are likely to work at home. This also means that IT departments need to make files accessible from remote locations, which requires server infrastructure. That kind of work requires a lot of resources that small and mid-sized businesses don’t have. Outsourcing cloud computing is a popular choice for these fledgling businesses.

Monitoring Productivity

Remote workers are expected to hand in deliverables, and should be held to deadlines. Some companies use remote desktop monitoring to make this process easier. Checking network traffic helps you see what employees are doing with their time, and pinpoint errors. Most companies use a VPN or a remote server to accomplish this task, which is perfect for BYOD offices.

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RDPSoft Company offers solutions to log remote desktop interactions for businesses with employees who work off-site.