I find that if the user has porno on their device, so be it. It's the same if the construction work had smut in their toolbox.
Yes, but in this day and age where people are lawsuit happy, if the porno is opened up in the office, and a coworker sees it and is offended, it's possible for the employee to file a lawsuit against the employer.
That could be the reason why to have a wifi hotspot with a BYOD as the business filters too aggressively.
But if the company is filtering, they are doing it for some type of reason. Honestly, if you work for an employer and you don't like work policies and such, willingly circumventing them is grounds for termination. If you feel your employer filters too agressively, then you should find a new employer....not take measures into your own hands to work around some established system.
For sensitive corporate data, that's why we have technology! Bitlocker is literally the best way to encrypt data. In Windows 8 (along with 7) and Windows Phone 8, Bitlocker should be used and promoted to keep sensitive data locked up.
Prior to Windows 8, bitlocker was only available in the enterprise and Ultimate versions of Windows...which many people don't have for their own personal use. And when it's BYOD, how can you ensure, or mandate or force an employee to run something like Bitlocker if they don't want to. It's their own personal device after all.
And with viruses and malware, Windows 8 devices for the BYOD situation shines over 7 in that sense. Built in anti-virus and multiple layers of security makes it a step higher than 7 in terms of security. The IT department can be used to counteract malware and viruses on peoples' personal devices as they would if the device was the companies. Again, promote the practice of staying safe on the line, one might definitely see a lower rate of malware altogether, especially if IE 10 along with everything else in use.
Yeah, but without standardization in the enterprise, you have no idea what you might run into. Let's say 4 out of 15 employees have McAfee and one morning they start having issues with their computers. Turns out a bad McAfee definition file caused high CPU usage....these occasional bad AV def files come out from time to time. When your AV is centrally maintained and controlled, everybody would have the same issue and the admin can go to the server, rollback to the previous version, hit a button to push it out and now everybody is corrected. With the BYOD model, you would potentially have people who are on all different configurations, and some people who will have done something silly and turned everything off because they found something a bit inconvenient. It's a risk that I would rather not take. There is a lot of other stuff in the IT world to take up all of my time, without having to troubleshoot a potential setup or configuration that I know nothing about.
I like Hippsie's analogy of bringing your own tools to the job site over the company issuing them. Your tools might be better, the company's tools can get stolen or damaged, and overall, going from point A to point B is achieved in the same or better fashion.
The tool analogy is interesting, but I think flawed in it's application here. An employee owned hammer or screwdriver isn't going to impact other workers or systems. A personal use hammer won't dictate a help desk ticket because it's deemed incompatible with a corporate nail. A torque wrench infected with a virus isn't going to spread that virus to all of the other wrenches on the job site.
Some employee hardware I have no issues with. For example, I bring in my own keyboard and mouse. I elect to use a Microsoft Trackball Explorer. They don't sell these anymore, so I cannot get the company to buy one. But I happen to have one from home that I am not using. These devices cannot inflict any damage or risk to the network or environment as a whole, so the only risk I have to assume is that IF they were to be stolen from my desk....the company would not be held accountable for replacing them as they weren't company provided.
*Note: As an exception to my above statement, I choose to use a mechanical keyboard with MX Cherry blue switches. It's rather loud and noisy. Even though I love it, and typing on it is a pure joy and delight, bringing that device into work and using it because it's better than my work model would drive the rest of my coworkers nuts. So, even though a keyboard would generally be acceptable, not in all cases.
As a side note, I used to work in a company who provided desk chairs that a lot of employees didn't particularly like. So, a few employees decided to bring in their own leather desk chairs to work from. It didn't take long at all for a visit from HR saying they needed to take their own chairs home. The company was unwililng to accept the potential legal and insurance issues arising from either 1). theft of the chair or 2). injury while on the job from using it.
BYOD is just not a simple and easy concept.
Edit: And what about non-legitimate non-licensed software that an employee might have installed on their own device? In the event they use this software for business use and the company is audited, who is on the hook for that one? Does the company get a free pass because it's not their device.
And what about a situation where an employee may not own a particular piece of software on their own personal computer? At my company, we have an enterprise agreement with MS which gives us the ability to run windows client os's as well as office on a certain number of company assets. These agreements don't extend to sending copies home for employees on their home computers. Are these employees simply required to pay for these products out of pocket when they elect to use their own equipment?