As I discuss the various best practices and policies that you
can design today into your IT infrastructure, I can't help
but thinking about the past, specifically
how much has changed.
When I began in this industry, it was 19,
let's see, I almost said '64, but no, it
was 1994 when I really got started in the IT industry,
and I was with IBM in Tampa, Florida in the support
department, and all we had to worry
about was IBM employees-- the internal employees were who
we supported-- all we really had to worry about was them
bringing their own software to the party.
I remember troubleshooting one laptop
and discovering that the young lady that worked for IBM
had loaded some applications that
were included on her Rolling Stones Greatest Hits CD.
And that had fouled up her IBM ThinkPad.
These days, your list of concerns
could be a lot longer with the "bring your own device"
paradigm that is common in networks today.
So you will want to make sure that there is a clear-cut
"bring your own device" strategy and written policy
that your employees are going to be reading
carefully and signing off on.
And as you might guess, it really
all begins with what devices are permitted to begin with.
Is an employee allowed to bring in their own phone
and connect it, perhaps, to the corporate network?
Are they allowed to bring in their own tablet?
The devices that are permitted are then
going to need to adhere to a security policy
that you outline.
And also, keep in mind, you need to inform them
of the support policy.
Maybe we have an application that we encourage they install
on their own device, and we may need to explicitly
make it clear to them that we support the application, not
the device itself.
So when they drop their iPad and crack that screen,
they are not to come to our internal support department
for help with that situation.
We also want to make it clear who
owns what, who exactly owns what components,
what applications that have to do with these devices.
And you're probably going to want to explicitly permit
certain applications.
There is excellent software around the area
of "bring your own device," and one
of the things these software packages can do
is they can restrict the permitted applications
and even permitted internal functions of those devices.
One package that I actually have the privilege of providing
training on, here at CBT Nuggets inside my Windows 10 courses,
is Microsoft's Intune, a really impressive web-based software
application that you can deploy out to your users' devices,
and have really great control of those devices.
And you may choose to do this, of course,
when they are in your corporate environment--
so when they connect to the corporate network, the policies
that you have start taking effect.
I couldn't believe the extent of what
you can do to a device, a mobile device, that is
inside the corporate confines.
And Intune even supports non-mobile device control
as well.
So you could use this product to control their Windows
desktops, as well.
But it was pretty amazing.
I mean, I didn't know you could do things
with packages like this, like take away
the camera, that's right, completely
have the camera functionality be wiped from the device
dynamically when they enter a certain area.
And quick funny story--
I used my own phone for a demonstration of taking away
the camera, and then forgot to put it back,
and was at a birthday party, and had no camera on my phone.
A bit of an embarrassing moment, but the great news
is, thanks to Intune policies, I was
able to easily put my camera back
as the administrator of the Intune service.
Now, we know that many of these policies
are going to closely relate to other policies
that we've designed for our IT infrastructure,
and the "bring your own device" policy is no exception.
Notice that it is most likely going
to integrate very closely with the acceptable use policy, as
well as the offboarding policy.
There's probably going to be specific procedures
that you want to do when someone is leaving the organization.
Now, keep in mind, as you've been viewing this Nugget,
you may be thinking to yourself, well, Anthony this
is all fine and good, but I am not
going to allow them to bring their own crap to the network.
And that's absolutely fine.
That is something that organizations decide to do
and that's perfectly valid.
So you're going to take your employees
and you're going to say, OK, for those employees that
need a phone as part of their job,
we're going to issue them a corporate mobile device.
For those employees we have that need a tablet,
we are going to issue them a tablet.
And you tell these employees, and make it clear,
that they're not allowed to engage in their own devices
in your corporate networks.
I hope this has been informative for you.
And I'd like to thank you for viewing.