Survey Highlights Employee Concerns About BYOD

Business concerns about the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend have been well documented, but a new Harris survey commissioned by Fiberlink reveals that employees have worries about BYOD policies as well. The vast majority of the 2,243 enterprise workers surveyed said they are concerned about their employers being able to access their personal devices.

The infographic that accompanied the survey results, highlighted the following findings:

• "82 percent consider the ability to be "tracked" an invasion of their privacy."
• "76 percent would not give an employer access to view what applications are installed on their personal device. "
• "75 percent would not allow their employer to install an app which gives the company the ability to locate them in exchange for access to corporate resources. "
• "86 percent are concerned to extremely concerned about the unauthorized deletion of their personal pictures, music and email profiles. "
• "82 percent are concerned to extremely concerned about their employer tracking websites they may browse on personal devices during non-work time. "

NetworkWorld's John Cox noted, "[Personal] data is potentially available to employers because in many BYOD policies workers typically agree to accept a client MDM app or agent on their personal device, setting up a connection with the MDM server. That tradeoff also often gives employers the right and the power to delete personal files and content, along with corporate data, in a remote wipe if the device is lost or stolen."

eWeek's Michelle Maisto quotes Fiberlink President Christopher Clark as saying, "Organizations need to be just as concerned about user privacy as they are about the security of corporate data."

However, CIO's Tom Kaneshige reported, "CIOs don't even want to see personal data on BYOD smartphones because it stirs up legal problems." He quoted Ingram Micro's Jason Conner, who said, "Personal data to legal is like toxic waste, they don't want to touch it."