Discussion on:

Risks and rewards of tablets in an organization

Add theft as a con. It's a lot easier for someone to pick up a tablet and walk out with it, than it is for them to clip the security tether, take the laptop off of the cart and walk out with it, or even to walk out with a desktop. We already have issues with our equipment being stolen in the 5 minutes someone's back has been turned. Tablets will be thief magnets.

Plus, another con is the apps that are available. Most of our vendors haven't developed mobile apps, and of the ones that have, very few actually work. We purchased an app that was supposed to aggregate medical data on smart phones, and it was so horrible and buggy that it wasn't worth the cost and trouble. Until apps are built that actually work, meet FDA, HIPAA, HITECH, ARRA, and other regulations, there won't be widespread adoption.

Where I could see a real need is for Home Health and Home Hospice care.

There is too much paranoia over tablets and handhelds. If you are concerned about data security, don't store data on them. Use a Citrix client to access sensitive data, that way it will never actually be on the device. As for support, decide what you do and don't support and make it part of your policy.

These mobile devices (talking about tablets and smartphones, not laptops) are not mandatory, at least not yet, anyway. So my company held to the same policy it had in place since the Apple Newton PDA craze: If an employee wants it, the employee has to buy it, and the company will make REASONABLE efforts to support the more popular models (usually the favor of the day in the Executive suite. But hey, it's Corporate America, IT. Suck it up and deal with it.) That way, if a user decides to leave his or her hard-earned money just lying around...oh, well. Yeah, when the company stopped supplying, and constantly replacing, widgets and gadgets, all this business of dropping them in the toilet, in order to get the newer model, suddenly quit.

The loss of a tablet containing unencrypted confidential client information in some countries could lead to jail-time for the employee. Risk management relating to tablet usage should be comprehensively evaluated by the risk officer of the company. Aspects such as password access, encrypted data, data records in the cloud or via remote log-in to company servers only and authorised apps that may be installed including anti-virus software, are only some of the aspects to be covered by a tablet usage policy development.