70 million employees are projected to have enterprise access through mobile devices by 2015. At the same time, 8000 petabytes of data is projected to be stolen in North America alone. A petabyte you ask? Well to put that into perspective, one petabyte is roughly one million gigabytes, or…a lot. Statistics such as these have sparked controversy over new workplace policies such as BYOD, or Bring Your Own Device. On one hand, it is much more cost efficient, and increases productivity. Great! But, on the other hand, there are serious data integrity and theft risks involved.

If you are a visual person, like myself, then you will appreciate this lovely infographic that came across my desk. It gives a great representation of the possible pros and cons of implementing this kind of policy within your organization. According to the infograph, 74% of CIOs’ support BYOD, while 21% said that BYOD is flawed. With this much overall support, the trend is surely going to continue growing.

If done correctly, the benefits can be incredible.  But there can be a downside if not properly implemented. What can you do? Eliminate risk as much as possible. Consult with your IT department…or person. Make sure they are prepared and have some kind of strategy in place. Also, develop a best practices guide for employees to follow. If they don’t know the risks, they are not going to know how to avoid them.

Whether you are a decision maker at a large commercial real estate firm, or a property manager with less than 50 employees. The key is making sure you protect your data properly. In turn you prevent your organization from the negative side effects of BYOD, and get the most out of the bottom line.

For the full article, check out, BYOD and the Great Divide: An Inforaphic, and for more information on BYOD check our post, Work Starts at 9:00. BYOD?