Fujitsu works on BYO legal, security issues

Fujitsu must get the proper security and legal policies in place before moving to a bring-your-own-devices (BYO) model, according to CIO Nick Brown.

The IT services company that employs several thousand employees across Australia has currently deployed a mixture of laptops, notebooks and desktops across its workforce; however, in an exclusive interview with ZDNet Australia, Brown said that this is under review by the company.

"We have a mixture of laptops and notebooks, and we do have some desktops, but we are reviewing that to see whether we actually go to a dumb device where people just come in and log-in," he said, adding that this would be ideal for the company's call centres.

"They don't need all that hardware; they can just come in and use the Fujitsu solution with zero footprint, whether you log on, or whether you have a key," he said. "That's where we're going to reduce our costs."

Fujitsu Australia had previously indicated that the company is looking to move to BYO devices within five years, and Brown said that although it is "very early days", the company has begun collaborating with the UK office on trialling BYO devices.

"We're working in collaboration with the UK ...It's within our strategic view."

Brown speculated that a trial in Australia would start with corporate services and developers who are keen to be able to choose their own machines.

"We'd probably move into some of the developers' areas who are very keen to have their own machines because they like their own drivers and other things that we can't support in a large sense," he said.

Fujitsu would need to iron out the privacy and intellectual property issues that arise with a BYO model, Brown said, and figure out whether the company or the device owner actually owns the data on the device in the event that they leave the company.

"In the BYO model, what gives us the right to wipe their data ...? Those are some of the issues we have to work through; privacy and their own personal information against our own company data."

Other obstacles that the company would face would be working out the legalities, ensuring that all software on the devices is properly licensed, ensuring that the devices have virus protection and making sure that the devices are compatible with Fujitsu's internal network.