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Security, BYOD concerns predicted for 2014

Tyson Ngubeni
By Tyson Ngubeni
Johannesburg, 13 Dec 2013
Windows XP will present companies with a raft of security issues next year, says Adaptiva CTO Deepak Kumar.
Windows XP will present companies with a raft of security issues next year, says Adaptiva CTO Deepak Kumar.

Windows XP will cause significant security issues and the bring your own device (BYOD) trend will create an additional burden on IT departments in 2014, according to IT systems management company Adaptiva.

XP remains among the most popular operating systems in the world and, according to the company, many enterprises "will still be running it after support ends in April". This is despite Microsoft no longer distributing patches for vulnerabilities, placing businesses worldwide at risk.

Deepak Kumar, CTO of Adaptiva, says migration from XP to other OS platforms is likely for most companies, but complicated for a select few. "In cases where Windows XP is embedded in devices such as manufacturing systems and POS [point-of-sale] systems, replacement may be neither possible nor necessary.

"In many cases, the OS in embedded devices is not patched to begin with, so the lack of updates is irrelevant."

Kumar adds that risk is minimal on such devices, as they are not physically connected to a network.

Too much work

Adaptiva says BYOD "will improve productivity and employee morale, but it will increase the burden on IT rather than reducing it".

Kumar says the process will create a lot of work, as companies would need to:

* Invest in an enterprise-class secure file sharing solution.
* Establish, communicate, and enforce policies around use.
* Monitor and expand WiFi and public Internet capacity as needed. "BYOD will add personal and business traffic, which will continue to grow for the foreseeable future," he says.
* Evaluate, select, and deploy "approved" apps.
* Protect employee privacy. "BYOD does not give a company the legal right to view or collect any information on those personal devices, which must be treated differently from corporate-provided ones."
* Lock down and reclaim BYOD accounts, data, storage space, etc, when employees leave.
* Review compliance regulations and ensure the deployment is in alignment with them.

Some of these factors fail to convince Adaptiva that BYOD will replace corporate endpoint devices.

Kumar encourages a best practice of 2013, which prioritises the use of existing resources to their greatest capacity.

"Technology is advancing to the point where it is possible to leverage unused storage, memory and CPU resources from desktop collectives, while people are working on them."

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