The trend toward employees introducing their own consumer devices - including laptops and mobile devices - into the workplace is resulting in a change of how enterprises deliver services to their employees and customers.

The challenge for IT managers today is to find ways to enable the use of a wide range of technologies in the workplace while ensuring the data residing at the endpoint and in the network is secured and managed appropriately. A key part to managing this change is to put in place policies, educate employees and implement data loss prevention and encryption tools so that organisations can understand where their data is and how it is being used.

Consumerisation of IT is transforming our industry and it's especially transforming the IT function in all enterprises - large and small. This transformation has been driven by the explosive growth of mobile devices.  Smart phones and smart mobile devices, are outstripping PCs by a very large number in terms of their shipments, and eventually, they will dominate in terms of the way people access the Web, and in many cases access applications.

Employees are bringing these to work and they expect IT to support their mobile devices.  The days in which IT can dictate the standard device are vanishing. Rather than trying to hold on to control, some companies have embraced the change and moved to a model in which they allow employees to bring their own PC or mobile device to work, and the company will accommodate it.

This consumerisation of our industry has some challenging implications. Consumers are driving many of the IT decisions and it's leading to a confusing intermingling of personal and enterprise information on these devices.

On laptops and mobile devices, employees store both personal and corporate data.  This is one of the reasons why Data Loss Prevention and encryption technologies are getting more and more attention at the C-level and board level.

IT and business leaders need to be confident that their sensitive information is protected, no matter where it is.  Data Loss Prevention technologies provide you with a better understanding of where your information is, where it's going, how it's being used and provide some assurance that it's protected no matter where it is. 

Vicepresident for technology security company Symantec Asia Pacific, Craig Scroggie is also a graduate and fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, a fellow of the Australian Sales & Marketing Institute serving on their National Advisory Committee, a trustee for the Committee for Economic Development of Australia, and is a non-executive director and board member of the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA).