Employee perceptions of BYOD in South Africa: Employers are turning a blind eye?

Abstract

As mobile Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) become greater entrenched in society and with the nature of work changing, more and more international organizations are embracing and/or considering formalizing the phenomenon of ‘Bring Your Own Device’ (BYOD). The gist of BYOD is the use of privately owned devices and software to access and work with organizational resources. There is however little that is known about the degree to which organizations in South Africa are embracing the BYOD phenomenon. In this paper, we explored how employees in organizations in South Africa perceive the use of their privately owned devices for work. The results from 61 employees suggest that there is a strong awareness of the BYOD concept among employees. Employees also appear to believe that although their employers are aware of the use of privately owned devices for work, the employers are reluctant to formally create BYOD organizational strategies. The findings suggest that the laxity of employers in South Africa to deal with the BYOD phenomenon as an issue of strategic importance could result in considerable security challenges for organizational data.