The Data Driver

By: Ammar Enaya, Regional Director, HPE Aruba, Middle East & Turkey
As adoption of wearables becomes more mainstream in the Middle East, it brings added complexity to BYOD in an enterprise. One of the more interesting features of wearable tech is its ability to tether to, and control, smartphones over a remote connection. So even if wearables are denied access to enterprise networks, they may already be able to access it. Which means they can download and store company data. Many come with built-in cameras. This will understandably make IT departments worried.

In today’s mobile world, companies need a strong combination of policies, training, device management, controls and application security. To help IT and security professionals implement a successful mobile strategy for both company-owned and BYOD devices, global IT association ISACA is presenting a free virtual conference, titled “Mobile Security Matures: Managing the New Mobile Enterprise 2.0,” .

Dell and CIO Association of India announced the results of ‘India’s Best CIO Mega Trends 2014’, survey of over 50 leading CIOs across the country. Dell and CAI conducted the survey at the recently concluded ‘India’s Best CIO’ event to assess the top IT trends that will dominate 2014, and challenges influencing their adoption, as seen by India’s leading CIOs.

Both Big Data and BYOD emerged as the most prominent trends with close to 60% of respondents acknowledging the role these technologies will play in 2014. The survey covered respondents from a range of industries including retail, insurance infrastructure and pharma amongst others. Other significant trends that the survey spotted include Datacenter Transformation (19 %) and Desktop Virtualisation (19%) - also seen by CIOs as IT trends that will dominate this year.

Novell India has shared with us its predictions for 2014. The company sees a lot of traction for consumerization of enterprise apps, simple solutions for the masses and BYOD.

1.Consumerization of enterprise apps: IT leaders will make consumerization part of their long term business strategy.  The lines will continue to blur between consumer apps and corporate apps.  For example, the corporate standard used to be MS Office for editing, but tools introduced for consumers are routinely used for business (such as Evernote or Google Apps).  These consumer tools will continue to pick up steam.

At a time when the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) trend is making headlines, bringing with it challenges and benefits in equal measure, another technology initiative is quietly occupying the middle ground. ‘Choose Your Own Device’ (CYOD) offers many of the benefits of BYOD without some of the drawbacks.
With the growth of the ‘always on, always connected’ work culture, the adoption of smartphones, tablets and notebooks that facilitate the trend is also growing. Leading market research firm, Forrester1 predicts that in two years' time, 350 million workers will use smartphones, 200 million of whom will take their own devices to the workplace. It is estimated2 that 90 percent of organisations will have to support BYOD by 2014.

Bring your own device (BOYD) is not just a purchasing policy and needs to be approached more broadly with the applications and strategies designed for today's world, according to Gartner, Inc. While most enterprises today are increasingly feeling the imperative to "do mobile," many don't know where to begin and there are many obstacles to success. Gartner says the key decision about BYOD is one of applications architecture and solutions design.

As connected devices, which together make up the “Internet of Things,” play a greater role in business and daily life, Indian consumers seem conflicted about the trade-offs among privacy, security and convenience factors. ISACA’s 2013 IT Risk/Reward Barometer survey shows that 88% of Indians are concerned that their information will be stolen online. Despite that, 50% reuse the same two to three passwords across multiple online accounts. More than one-third (35%) of Indians have used a family member’s name as a password and 31% have used a significant date such as a wedding, anniversary or birthday—all of which can be guessed easily and may create security issues as consumers begin using an increasing number of Internet-connected devices.

The term “Internet of Things” refers to machines, devices, sensors, cars, cameras and other items that are connected to the Internet and often to each other. Fifty billion devices are expected to be connected to the Internet by 2020.*

ESET has provided tips for all workers who use their mobiles and tablets for office purpose to avoid the risk of BYOD. ESET also suggests the employees to avoid being the guy who brings his own.
Lock your deviceA recent survey by a phone insurer, of 1,000 adults, found that 43% of "bring your own device" users had no protection at all on their devices. Less than a third - 31% use PINs or pass-codes on their devices.Don't share your work laptopESET research found that 46% of people with a "work" laptop shared it with others.Think hard about what websites you visit on your work machineOne need not to think that downloading peer-to-peer or "free" software, can put your machine at increased risk of malware

In only a few short years, Cloud Computing has altered the information technology (IT) landscape for both large enterprises and midsize businesses — and this is the beginning of a larger transformation.  Cisco estimates that there were “only” about 200 million things connected to the Internet in the year 2000. Driven by advances in mobile technology and the “bring your own device” (BYOD) trend, among others, this number has increased to approximately 10 billion today. A dramatic upsurge to 50 billion connected people, processes, and things is expected by 2020. The resulting Internet of Everything (IoE) will drive the next wave of explosive Internet growth, with Cloud as a pillar of this transformation.
But what is the current state of IT Cloud consumption? What will IT organization of the future look like, and what will IT decision makers do to be successful in this changing environment? In a wide-ranging global study, Cisco Consulting Services (CCS) along with Intel, sought to pinpo…