The UK government has taken a step towards greater IT efficiency by announcing plans to roll out a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) initiative.
The strategy was announced by Liam Maxwell, director of ICT Futures at the Cabinet Office, who was speaking at an Intellect conference on Thursday.
Maxwell said that the government’s G-Cloud programme, which aims to reduce the total cost of public sector IT and of which Chant is director, would help the BYOD initiative develop through flexible management of service contracts.
BYOD represents a positive step from the government to adjust to new trends in consumer electronics whilst cutting costs. However, Koby Amedume, EMEA marketing director at systems management software provider Kaseya, suggests that security must be a priority over cost-cutting in the strategy.
“The concern with such a high profile institution allowing its staff, albeit not those operating in highly sensitive areas, to use their own devices is that the same security practices employed within the four walls of government are not extended to these ‘external devices’, thus potentially opening the floodgates for serious breaches of security,” he said.
“If this policy is to be truly effective, the government, and indeed any other organisation considering a BYOD strategy, must first of all examine the current practices they have in place for managing ‘traditional’ corporate devices and then look to extend these to offer protection to employees’ own mobile devices,” he said. “This is the only way to guarantee the safekeeping of your data and these devices.”
German foreign minister warns Russia will face consequences for “absolutely intolerable” cyberattack on ruling party,…
Google is reportedly laying off at least 200 staff from its “Core” organisation, including key…
Investor appeasement? Apple unveils huge $110 billion share buyback program, as sales of iPhone decline…
Tesla retreats from pioneering gigacasting manufacturing process, amid cost cutting and challenges at EV giant
No skynet please. After the US, UK and France pledge human only control of nuclear…
Microsoft's AI investments continue in south east Asia, after investments in Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, as…