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The Smart Techie was renamed Siliconindia India Edition starting Feb 2012 to continue the nearly two decade track record of excellence of our US edition.

July - 2012 - issue > Technology

IT Shift to Tablets - Have You Prepared Yet?

Puneesh Chaudhry
Co-Founder & CEO-Copiun
Sunday, July 1, 2012
Puneesh Chaudhry
Puneesh Chaudhry is responsible for the overall corporate strategy and day-to-day operational execution. Under Puneesh's leadership, Copiun has successfully raised angel and venture funding, received a patent, and counts over 200 enterprise customers using its products globally.

Survey results from Nielsen show that users are abandoning their laptops and switching to tablets as their primary computing and entertainment devices. This trend is already beginning to carry over into the enterprise as a result of CoIT and BYOD, and IT departments must be prepared for the shift – or get left in the static dust. The Consumerization of IT (CoIT) is continuing to be one of the most disruptive trends for enterprises in recent history. A recent Gartner report suggests that there will be an estimated 665 million tablets in use worldwide by 2016, and industry analysts believe this trend has in fact crossed the chasm and the majority of enterprises in the U.S. have some kind of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) strategy – or problem. The reason for this is simple - companies see that investing in mobility has potential to bring ROI to them. For personal and corporate tasks the tablet allows employees to become increasingly mobile and productive.

However, enterprises must continue to adhere to a constantly changing set of standards, laws, and guidelines regarding data protection. In order to be productive, a knowledge worker needs to frequently share files and data with other employees, the company file server and their own mobile devices. But by doing so, the well meaning employee also exposes their firm to myriad security risks that may conflict with government regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley, the Patriot Act or the EU Data Protection Directive, as well as industry-specific regulations, such as Payment Card Industry (PCI) or Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).

Use of tablets and other personal devices is not going anywhere but up, and while the appeal of new tablets captivates even the most cautious among us, many are overlooking other significant risks:

• Internal collaboration - As virtual offices and remote workforces become the norm, we see teams accessing the latest daily operations briefings, conducting HR training, and distributing policies to mobile devices. Finance is facilitating the distribution of confidential information such as quarterly financial documents in tablet-friendly format. But what if one tablet user, a board member or employee, leaves the company? Who owns the information on her or his tablet? Is the tablet employee-owned or company-owned? If it’s a personal device, how can you secure and retrieve the information on it?


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