BYOD case study: Federal Department of Environment

This article appeared in the October issue of CRN magazine alongside the feature Shadow IT: "bring your own vulnerabilities".

The FDE BYOx decision to split corporate data from personal information was driven by executives wanting to use Apple devices. At the time, employees were using corporate-issued BlackBerry devices for mobile email, due to government security requirements.

CIO Al Blake said: “We wanted to provide BYOD connectivity for a growing number of workers so they didn’t have to carry a BlackBerry in one pocket and an iPhone in the other. We also needed a management solution that is, as far as possible, device-independent to alleviate the administrative burden while enabling greater mobile productivity.”

The department ultimately deployed Good for Enterprise from Good Technology. The various Good mobile device management platforms carry a high degree of secure containerisation. They secure email, contacts, calendaring, and tasks, and provide secure access, download and sharing of enterprise documents and information located behind the firewall.

Blake said: “Without Good’s secure container architecture, it becomes a nightmare to manage mobile devices, especially for a government entity.

“Issues arise around privacy, ownership, regulations and reimbursement. Imagine a procedure for reimbursing employees when they purchase a 99-cent app. It would be ridiculous,” he added.

More than 600 agency employees are now permitted to use Android, Apple and Windows Phones, however, they must adhere to corporate security protocols including strong passwords and no iPhone jailbreaks.