Dive Brief:

• It's a nice thing when employees want to supply their own electronic devices, like tablets and smart phones, because the company does not to have to buy them for as many people — but the IT department might not be as excited about the arrangement as accounting.
• When workers have access to company information and email on their own devices, IT has a challenge in keeping that secure from competitors or anyone else who might want a peek.
• It's possible to put policies in place to govern the use of private devices on the company system, but a survey by mobile-information firm Datamotion found that 56.1% of IT managers said their companies had policies in place, but 74.9% of workers said they didn't know if there was such a policy or not.

Dive Insight:

Even if there is a BYOD policy, making sure it's being followed is a second challenge. Once data goes to devices not configured by the company, there are risks. Habitat for Humanity, which presumably has less-sensitive information about its construction than a for-profit company, is handling the issue by paying for some employees to enroll their own phones in a security service for which the organization pays.