Assess the Rogue IT Benefits, Risks in Your Company

Several years ago, a Fortune magazine article predicted doom for corporations as their employees came and left work, increasingly armed with an array of mobile devices. Those were the tools that would lead to rogue IT wreaking havoc at work, it said.
Fast forward to today, and you’ll find that most companies have accepted the wave of changes that BYOD (bring your own device) behaviors have ushered into the workplace. By 2017, Gartner predicts, about 50 percent of companies actually will require employees to bring their own mobile devices for work places.

With that growing acceptance, it’s not surprising that many have implemented policies to address rogue IT, a term that’s used to describe the practice of employees using cloud-based services on their smartphones and tablets to back up files or to share other documents.

However, general acceptance does not mean that rogue IT can put your company at significant risk, unless you implement the proper measures to secure corporate data, as Alex Carroll notes in this video on rogue IT. “Rogue IT could be secretly damaging many corporations from within,” says Carroll, an IT expert and co-owner of Lifeline Data Centers.

While certain employee practices may not be intentionally criminal, they actually could be making the company liable for what he says could be a “jailing offense.”

For example, sensitive company files that land in Google Docs or DropBox are considered the intellectual property of those service providers, he said. And, in the case of HIPAA files, for example, a company could be accused of a crime if the health files are not properly handled by a company.

There’s no sign that the movement toward BYOD practices is going away. The key to ensuring your company is protected against liability includes developing strong policies, security measures, and practices that govern the use of mobile devices and cloud-based software.

Lifeline Data Centers, a colocation center with extensive experience in the IT industry, can help you assess your risks as well as provide guidance on how to protect your business from violations. Contact us to learn more.

Other resources:

• Infographic: The 22 Data Center Compliance Acronyms You Need to Know
• White Paper: Why Data Center Compartmentalization is Important
• Lifeline One Sheet: What You Need to Know About Lifeline Data Centers

Alex Carroll

Managing Member at Lifeline Data Centers

Alex, co-owner, is responsible for all real estate, construction and mission critical facilities: hardened buildings, power systems, cooling systems, fire suppression, and environmentals. Alex also manages relationships with the telecommunications providers and has an extensive background in IT infrastructure support, database administration and software design and development. Alex architected Lifeline’s proprietary GRCA system and is hands-on every day in the data center.