So you think you know what BYOD is? Think again!

Cisco Cius - Not BYOD since it's Corporate provisioned.

If you’re a manufacturer you’ve probably heard of BYOD, or ‘Bring Your Own Device’.  You know that more and more devices are proliferating throughout the organization. You also know that security is a big issue: How do you stop folks accessing sensitive systems, how do you protect Intellectual Property, and how do you prevent a disastrous shutdown caused by a device either intentionally or unintentionally?

Well, these are only some of the issues -- and they’re rarely addressed by a ‘Good-Enough Network’. Cisco’s BYOD is different -- it looks at the whole picture. It’s not just about your wireless network -- although the Cisco offerings are better than most! It’s about an holistic approach to BYOD. That covers the plant, IT, the LAN and fixed wired network and the wireless network too. All aspects.

As my colleague, Katie Taylor, says in her blog: Read More »

Tags: access point, beyond byod, bring your own device, Bring your Own Device (BYOD), byod, CIO, cisco byod, enterprise mobility, Manufacturing, MDM, Mobile Device Management, mobile devices, network management, vpn, wi-fi, wireless, wireless access points, wireless LAN, wlan

With more than seven billion souls set to tote 10 billion mobile-connected devices by 2016, mobility has not just arrived, it’s taken over our schools, businesses and personal lives.

Just ask Mitch Davis, the CIO of Bowdoin College, a private liberal arts college in Maine. Before BYOD ever became a global IT trend, according to Mitch, the vast majority of college students were already bringing their personal devices into the campus environment.

These co-eds expected Bowdoin to fully embrace personal mobility, and, upon graduation, these same post-grads expect that their employers will do the same (this year’s Connected World Technology Report findings back this up, with more than 40 percent of recent college graduates/Gen Y employees choosing BYOD flexibility over higher pay).

Bottom line, the rules of the game are changing, and companies must move beyond basic BYOD connectivity to meet employee demands today and tomorrow. To help companies meet these demands, we’ve introduced a comprehensive approach that unifies policy, supports a better user experience and simplifies management to deliver an uncompromised user experience in any workspace. After all, Cisco wants to empower IT managers to allow employees to have their devices and use them too. That means delivering:

1. A unified security policy across the whole organization – wired, wireless, VPN and now MDM – helping companies set and enforce policies;
2. An uncompromised user experience over the entire wired/wireless network, across any type of device; and,
3. Simplified operations and network management to understand application performance from a user’s perspective, accelerating troubleshooting and lowering operating costs.

Like Ray-Ban aviators, BYOD is here to stay. And done the right way, BYOD demands a comprehensive approach to allow current and future employees to work how they want, when and where they want, and on the devices they want – while still allowing IT the control and visibility to sleep at night.

Learn more about our announcement and new technologies here.

By the way, whether you’re a college student or have been working for 30 years, you’re eligible to take the BYOD Challenge and win a trip to 2012 London Olympics – good luck!

Tags: access point, beyond byod, bring your own device, Bring your Own Device (BYOD), byod, CIO, enterprise mobility, MDM, Mobile Device Management, mobile devices, network management, vpn, wi-fi, wifi, wireless access points, wireless LAN, wlan

It started with the iPhone and really picked up with the iPad. Silver haired gents in corner offices brought their new precious to IT and asked to “get on the network” or “get their email on this.” In the past, IT was able to mumble something about unsupported devices and how a random user who brought a random device was out of luck. After all, they had tested solutions in place, nice things like Windows Mobile and Blackberry, solutions that worked well with Enterprise infrastructure. These new things might be better at Angry Birds or Plants vs Zombies, but the whole BYOD/Enterprise interaction was an unknown and thus a threat and a risk. Poor IT guys got trumped though, silver haired guys said jump and eventually the answer changed from “not supported” to a more career preserving “how high?”

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Tags: anyconnect, byod, device proliferation, device virtualization, enterprise device management, Mobile Device Management, mobile device security, security, TrustSec, vdi, webinar

Okay, this may sound like gibberish. But I’m sure that many of you know what I mean. Just to be clear, let me put the title in plain English: Mobile Device Management (MDM) is not the only approach to help secure a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) environment.

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Tags: bring your own device, byod, MDM, Mobile Device Management, mobile devices, SecureX, security