Browsing last week’s industry newsletters, I noticed that Automation World had two related stories on new technologies:

Industry Interrupted: Tablets and Smart Phones Poised to Make a Big Impact

Industrial Networking Desires Revealed

Both articles indirectly point to an issue that industry needs to come to terms with quickly if we are ever going make our plant floors secure.

The BYOD Iceberg?

Let’s start with the Tablets and Smart Phones story. It is about the issue of mobile devices, especially personal mobile devices, showing up on the plant floor. Never going to happen you say? I wouldn’t be so sure.

First, a definition. The topic of personal mobile devices is referred to in the corporate IT world as “Bring Your Own Device” or BYOD. If you haven’t heard of BYOD, Wikipedia defines it as:

Bring your own device (BYOD) is a business policy of employees bringing personally owned mobile devices to their place of work and using those devices to access privileged company resources

A common example is using your personal iPhone to access your company’s email system. And as I will explain later, the iPhone is only the tip of the iceberg. The whole “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) phenomenon is a major concern throughout the corporate world. Read more »