Andre van Zyl, MTN Business

The old ‘brick and mortar’ way of work, where employees are chained behind their desks from 8am to 5pm, are long gone.

So said Andre van Zyl, senior manager for enterprise product and services at MTN Business, during the ITWeb Mobility Summit at The Forum.

“The workforce is becoming more and more mobile by virtue of the way we conduct business today,” said Van Zyl. “Today, you will find that there are more and more meetings, increasing time away from your desk.”

He added that, although employees are conducting their business out of office, customers and colleagues still require the same responsiveness as before.

“Employees need to be mobile to conduct their work these days, but remain in touch with the office and customers at all times,” he said. “The introduction of a new and younger workforce that does not want to be dictated to with respect to devices and/or brands culminated into the introduction of BYOD.”

According to a study conducted in 2012, there were a total of 397.1 million mobile workers globally, up from 187.9 million in 2011, noted Van Zyl. Currently, 73% of the global enterprise workforce is mobile, he added.

“The standard enterprise employee is in desperate need to stay connected with the office whilst being away from the office. Mobile connectivity includes access to laptops, mobile phones and tablets.”

However, all these are useless without access to the correct enterprise applications in order to continue to conduct your work while away from the office, he said.

Van Zyl noted that mobile devices have increased security threats to organisations, including device loss or theft.

“Organisations are at risk of casual attackers, snoopers, or inexperienced hackers who gain unauthorised access to lost, stolen or misplaced device. There are also device harvesters who seek to recover data from lost or discarded devices in order to sell information.”

Because of these threats, Van Zyl emphasised that organisations need sound BYOD policies as well as mobile device management strategies in place in order to mitigate these risks.