Installing apps for work on your personal phone?

[poing]

andy-xr said:

Mr Will said:

andy-xr said:

As an afterthought to an earlier post, and seeing as people keep bringing it up....does noone have remote wipe on their own phone?

I have it set on mine incase its lost or stolen and it backs up on WiFi to Google drive

I have the ability to remote wipe my phone. Nobody else.

I'm pretty sure my employer would say the same if I wanted to remote wipe any of their devices.

So the issue really is, who's doing the remote wipe and how can you separate out personal and work data so not all of it is wiped. But the remote wiping is generally a good plan to have? So something like this might work instead; https://www.android.com/work/

Most company MDM software allows a selective wipe which should take care of that, it's ability varies though. I might or might not have accidentally pressed the button which said full wipe device on a staff members personal phone. aperboy:

Beyond human mistakes there can also be system issues and I'd rather my phone didn't suddenly reset itself to factory without me expecting it.

[ClockworkCupcake]

poing said:

Beyond human mistakes there can also be system issues and I'd rather my phone didn't suddenly reset itself to factory without me expecting it.

Exactly so.

Tech is cheap enough now that there is no reason to mix business and personal.

If you're an employee then your employer shouldn't be such a tight arse as to expect you to BYOD. And if you are freelance then you shouldn't be such a tight arse as to not have a dedicated business device.

Edit:
And if you can't be arsed to carry two devices then think of it as a laziness tax and you deserve everything you get.

[plasticpig]

poing said:

Most company MDM software allows a selective wipe which should take care of that, it's ability varies though. I might or might not have accidentally pressed the button which said full wipe device on a staff members personal phone. aperboy:

Beyond human mistakes there can also be system issues and I'd rather my phone didn't suddenly reset itself to factory without me expecting it.

With Andriod it's dead easy to hack permissions to prevent a wipe. In Marshmallow you can revoke permissions without hacking as its actually a feature of the OS. Have both Sophos and Meraki MDM at work so might give it a go sometime and see what happens.

[Debaser]

The company I work for provides a mobile. I don't mind carrying two phones so I have a separate personal mobile.

It makes sense to keep things separate, and means when I'm on holiday I don't get disturbed by calls about work.

[smashie]

I am one of the administrators for our MDM system, however I do not get to decide on the policy. I decided that I did not like the policy that they were applying so I removed it from my phone. I had the option of using one of the company's ipad minis, but they were wifi only so no use unless tethered so I rejected that. It does not bother me that I cannot get work email on my phone, it means that I can properly switch off at the end of the day and not get disturbed at weekends.
It does mean that I don't get updates on my way to customer site or if I am out of the office it means customers won't get a reply to a problem for a while, but that's the company's problem.

[vikingaero]

klootzak said:

Haha .. yes, I'm probably a bit cynical.

20% of our people are completely brilliant. Committed and great to be around. The kind of people you really want to work with.
60% are effective, but "yeah well, when are we getting paid."
20% are an utter PITA, know thei rights and want everything their way.

As a fully paid up, tree-hugging liberal (and committed champagne socialist) I find the last group a bit of a challenge. But it never stopped me from getting rid of them

k

Done quite a lot of contracting work for companies over the years:

20% are completely brilliant and now how to motivate staff and ensure the right tools for the job.
60% are effective, resist paying out unless forced to and have similarly motivated staff.
20% are an utter PITA. Screw their employees on everything. Removal of oompany cars to mileage schemes, removal of mobiles, minimal purchasing of anything paid or licensed. As a result their employees have a similar outlook and I don't blame them.

Thing is: takeovers/mergers etc. Rarely will a takeover result in a company moving up the above scale. The top 20% are fairly static. The 60% band are sliding.

[bitchstewie]

poing said:

Most company MDM software allows a selective wipe which should take care of that, it's ability varies though. I might or might not have accidentally pressed the button which said full wipe device on a staff members personal phone. aperboy:

Beyond human mistakes there can also be system issues and I'd rather my phone didn't suddenly reset itself to factory without me expecting it.

I don't know of an MDM that doesn't have a full wipe option though, so I think you're always dependent on trusting your IT team not to do it rather than them not having the technical capability to do it, that's in the context of an MDM though.

It's an interesting time at the moment, as a business we have to ensure our data is secure, the flip side is that there are a lot of employees who want to use their own phones for stuff like email so it's how we ensure we're covered whilst not wrecking all that goodwill.

[Ynox]

I have in the past - can't be arsed with carrying 2 phones or an RSA token etc. Had to agree to allow the phone to be remote wiped in one place - I figured this wasn't too much of a problem really as I trusted that it would only be done if the device was lost/stolen (in which case it being wiped is a good thing).

Sadly there's no BYOD offered where I am now so it's the case of carrying 2 devices.

[Chrisgr31]

All companies I have worked at have supplied work mobiles, and the usual reason has been so that the phone number belongs to them. If I leave they don't want to make it extremely easy for their clients to contact me! We do now have a BYOD scheme but no one in our division uses it. I carry two phones, I have had my personal mobile number for 15 or so years, others use the work mobile for personal calls and whilst in theory you have to pay for personal calls no one I know has be asked to do so.

As regards laptops I use my own from home or if away on business. However believe they will soon be supplying us all with laptops.

[jonwm]

I've had 2 phones for 10 plus years now, even though work phone is a smartphone I like to be able to switch it off when on leave

[sjg]

Personally, no issue with authenticator apps. But then I really can't be bothered with carrying two phones so inevitably my work phone is always in switched off and in a drawer unless I'm travelling abroad and want to run up their bill rather than mine. Lync/SfB call forwarding options mean I can always have calls come to whichever phone I like on whatever schedule I like, so I only ever publish my (nominally) "office" number.

I have my employer's email on my personal device but it's only basic activesync policies. For clients, I'm fine with installing their authenticator app or a "container" email app like Good but wouldn't ever give them more access or control than that.

That said, if I was doing a job where I had no need for a company phone and someone came along telling me I needed to install an app on my own device in order to get access to something necessary for my work, I'd probably tell them to go away too. But then those are situations where hardware tokens are handy.