The Downside Of Bringing Technology To Work

Jul 31, 2007 4:20 PM

American Airlines employees may be disappointed when they bring their slick new iPhones to work. The Apple device didn't make the cut of the airline's recently updated list of mobile devices allowed to sync with the company's IT systems, reports Business Week.

"We'll only let certain things connect to our network," says American Airlines Chief Information Officer Monte Ford. His main concern is ensuring outside electronics don't undermine the company's data security.

That preoccupation is widespread in the business world. IT departments at companies ranging from Qwest Communications International, to Bank of America and even to the McGraw-Hill Companies aren't supporting the iPhone.

Security worries over consumer technologies include iPods, USB drives, Google Gmail and even gaming consoles.

Some consumer gadgets and software applications can benefit a company when they help employees get their jobs done more efficiently. But the security implications are legion, says Ken Silva, chief security officer at VeriSign, which specializes in network security software. "When we bolt those things onto corporate networks, we open up holes in the environment," he told Business Week.

At drugmaker Pfizer, for example, an employee's spouse loaded file-sharing software onto her Pfizer laptop at home, creating a security hole that appears to have compromised the names and Social Security numbers of 17,000 current and former Pfizer employees, according to a letter Pfizer sent to state attorneys general on May 30. Pfizer's investigation showed that 15,700 of those employees actually had their data accessed and copied.

So why not ban outside software and hardware altogether? The fact is, much technology aimed at consumers is more innovative and cheaper than products made for companies and just makes good business sense, says Douglas Neal, a research fellow at Computer Sciences' Leading Edge Forum Executive Program. Some workers have a difficult time understanding why they have a 100-megabyte limit on their corporate e-mail account when they can get 2.5 gigabytes with Gmail, says Steve Prentice, chief of research at Gartner.

"With few exceptions, people don't do it because they want to be awkward or break security or be a pain in the backside," he told Business Week of the tendency to use consumer tech at work. "They do it because of frustration, or a problem or limitation with the IT services provided by the organization."

Research by Gartner shows that employees' personal devices have already made inroads into corporate networks. The trend shows no sign of abating. As of September 2005, 29 percent of employees and 24 percent of contractors were using non-company-owned equipment on company networks, according to a Gartner survey of 404 IT managers in the U.S. and four European countries. Those managers expected use of non-company-owned hardware to grow to 42 percent of employees and 32 percent of contractors by 2008.

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