Short Discussion – BYOD
Susan Metros (USC), Steve Sather (Princeton), Joseph Shebatello (sp?) (USC)
On university campuses we always brought the devices we wanted – this is not new to us. A successful BYOD program is about supporting a campus community and allow them to use the tools that they feel make them most comfortable and productive.
“Mobility is pervasive, and devices are prolific” – Educause study.
In survey found that 90% of USC students own a smart phone.
Philosophy shifting from device management to data management.
Big fundamental shift right now on the administrative side – we’re going to have to pedal fast or risk looking really silly – e.g. procurement systems that don’t work on smart phones.
We have to think about how to secure the data because we no longer control the devices.
Students coming with 3 devices – smartphone, laptop, tablet. They come knowing how to collaborate with their peers, and then wonder why the official environments don’t support that level of interaction. Students used to come to universities to get access to advanced technology, now they come with technology that the faculty don’t know how to user.
BYOD offers the possibility of getting out of the end point hardware business – like labs, leasing, etc.
Companies are starting to give employees vouchers to purchase their own devices, and getting out of the hardware business.
In many cases the issue is support from vendor products. To some degree we can try to mitigate, but often you have to wait for vendor support. Some campuses are looking at formally requiring mobility support when picking vendors.
We should concentrate on what are the gaps between where we are and supporting any device. In admin space that may be support for different Java versions, security issues, policy issues.
Some discussion about how to manage and secure devices – at Stanford you have to register devices MAC address – starting to look at making people install a management framework (they wrote a iOS one themselves). Several schools are using or looking at management platforms. How do we get users to accept the responsibility that comes with bringing their own devices into the workplace?
There are issues with the fringes of the lifecycle – brand new devices cause us to scramble, and on the tail end we struggle with compatibility issues that lead to uncomfortable conversations.
We should look at why people need to download sensitive information onto a device in the first place? What don’t our systems do that require that? Particularly a problem in the cloud – native apps for Google apps, for example, have a long authentication window, so anyone who grabs the phone can have access to the Google docs.
Students are still using computer labs, as a group study space. Some don’t want to carry their computers on campus, so use loaners in libraries. Will people be carrying tablets? USC Med School created big pockets in their lab coats to fit iPads.
If you’re using responsive design, then a large part of the problem becomes browser support rather than device support.
Consumer devices like Apple TV, Xboxes, etc are causing problems on campus because of their use of multicast on the wireless network.
How do we educate people what’s safe to use? And will they listen? We have responsibilities to protect the data – how do we do that?
Mobile application management tools might be more appropriate than mobile device management – you can remote wipe data from specific applications. The problem is that the tools are very expensive and aimed for the corporate marketplace. At Stanford they give users the option to either remotely wipe the device or just wipe the Stanford profiles and data.
Oren Sreebny 