Frank Sinatra and the VPN

With Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) becoming firmly entrenched in many workplaces in the UK (IDC estimate 90% have some degree of official or unofficial policy for it), we examine the future of the VPN and how it impacts IT departments. As Sinatra famously sang, “and now, the end is near” – well it may be for the good old VPN…

Do you even allow BYOD in your organisation?

On some levels, the rise in personal laptop use in particular should set off alarm bells for any IT manager, particularly those who manage endpoint security. And not all use is official – a report in the Harvard Business Review online reported that the dramatic increase of Bring-Your-Own-Laptop (BYOL) has been in large part unsanctioned by IT. But even if you’ve given BYOD the green light, do you have the right solutions in place in case anyone does ‘Somethin’ Stupid’.

What does this mean for IT?

As you well know, many of the systems in place designed to protect the corporate network and corporate data are rendered obsolete when individual employees work on a personal laptop, and mishaps can lead to financial, reputational, competitive, compliance and legal difficulties for the business.

When employees connect to cloud services on non-corporate devices outside the view of IT, it significantly increases the risk of a data breach. Ask an IT manager why that is, and you’ll probably say that the problem “sits between the keyboard and the chair”. That is, users themselves make unsafe or uninformed mistakes on which links they click on, which apps they allow to access their data, and which sites follow their moves around the web using cookies.

And now the VPN faces the final curtain

All this is to say that when it comes to allowing employees to bring their own laptop, IT must make it as easy as possible to follow security protocols. Traditionally, this has meant requiring a connection to the secure corporate network using a VPN. It’s likely that you have used a VPN at some point in the course of your career, and it’s even more likely the last thing that comes to mind when you think of that experience is “seamless”.

Some have gone so far as to disparage their corporate VPNs as “the worst thing about working remotely” or “the reason I missed that meeting”, as well as harsher comments not fit for print.

It’s safe to say that the days of the VPN are numbered. The elegant solution to the problem of the clunky VPN brings together comfortable user experience and security: a secure browser to access corporate data. For unmanaged laptops, this allows IT to set the parameters of acceptable use and access directly within the browser. Users only need to open a secure browser to get to work.

You can become that the “Ol Blue Eyes” of your users

Your users win….

This intersection between employee productivity and enterprise-grade security is BlackBerry’s sweet spot. With BlackBerry Access, users can simply open the secure browser and reach corporate servers, corporate content, and web-based applications such as Salesforce, from the comfort of their own laptop. Users can also edit Office 365 documents, and work from their tried-and-true productivity apps, such as BlackBerry Work and BlackBerry Workspaces. They can even get work done offline – supporting the dream of working from anywhere – it will be Love and Marriage.

IT win….

From IT’s perspective, this offers a win-win-win situation: users are more productive because their tools are intuitive, corporate data stays secure, and the cost of enabling BYOL goes down because there’s no need for VPN or VDI licenses. This frees up IT time and budget to work on automating and mobilising more complex workflows than the standard email-calendar-contacts trifecta (typical to PIM enterprise apps). We’re not suggesting you go around the office singing “I did it my way”, but it’s one last Sinatra reference at least!

Want to find out more?

As Blackberry Partners, Complete IT Systems can offer you expert advice on the solutions and how they could be effectively deployed in your business.

To find out more please call us on 01274 396 213 or use our contact form and we’ll arrange a good time to call you back.