Companies that have grown too quickly and lack IT device purchasing policies, or reduced workforce within in the IT divisions have been prone to allowing employees make their own purchasing decisions, or worse yet (for security reasons) use their own home devices to access corporate servers and email. This directly impacts the Intellectual Property security within that organization.
Recent article "Tablets Gain Ground"by Lauren Brousell in CIO magazine discussed survey results the statistics based around these issues.
CIO Magazine has recently taken surveys and compiled data from about 260 CIO level respondents for current purchasing and corporate access trends within businesses:
1) 36 percent allow employees to access corporate email on personal
devices
2) 23 percent allow access to corporate applications
3) 6 percent allow workers to buy their own devices (it is not clear if they were requiring their employees to stay within purchasing guidelines.)
The conclusion is employees who purchase their own devices (laptops, mobile phones and tablets) are given limited access to corporate networks, if any. Mostly the employees are given access to the Internet from within the buildings, but also forced to sign employee policy riders that put responsibility and liability on the individuals - that could lead to termination.
