IT Expert Voice

Personal and work lives are converging — in users’ pockets. New mobile devices from vendors including Microsoft, with its upcoming Windows 7 phones, recognize the fact that the same wireless phone on which employees get their business email probably is also the one they use for listening to music or snapping and viewing photos.

In reaction to IRS regulations, many companies have avoided writing policies for appropriate usage of mobile devices allowing mixing personal and business use. IRS rules require employees to reimburse companies for personal use of company-supplied mobile devices, using painful formulas, or the devices qualify as a taxable benefit to employees. These rules aren’t strongly enforced, but in reaction to them, companies often tell their employees that mobile devices are for business use only, and then the companies look the other way at personal use. Because of this regulatory environment, companies find themselves paying extra costs for personal bandwidth use by employees.

With the anticipated overturn of the IRS requirements by Congress by next year, businesses have an opportunity to tackle head-on policies for using corporate-issued wireless devices for personal use. And companies can also set policies governing personal phones used for business. READ MORE

The shape-shifting Internet wreaks havoc on a company’s ability to impose order on how employees use it. There are ever more opportunities for workers to engage through social media with a vast number of people outside the company, their comments and posts instantly viewable to the masses. Public social networks can create consternation for IT policy-makers worried about what information makes its way out the corporate door – but so too can the use of private collaboration networks, where employees may perceive they have a freer rein for sharing data. Hey, they’re among “friends,” right?

As if that’s not enough to worry about, let’s add the advent of Internet-accessible public clouds to the mix, and the door that opens to having potentially sensitive corporate data hosted well outside the realm of IT’s control, without IT’s knowledge.

It’s likely that your existing Internet use policies haven’t caught up to all this action, yet, so it’s probably time to revisit them. READ MORE