Practice Safe BYOD with Business Tablets

BYOD or Bring Your Own Devices has rapidly evolved from a curiosity into a mainstream phenomenon in just a couple of years. Knowledge workers and executives are looking to bring smartphones and tablets into the office as well as to logon to the network and access corporate resources such as printers and file repositories from these portable devices.

Given that a significant proportion of smartphones and tablets are not engineered for the business environment, it is hardly surprising that important aspects such as security and management often take a backseat to convenience and ease-of-use. Indeed, security experts and enterprises alike have often flagged the potential for data leakage and theft of confidential files as a major concern.

It is not to say that consumer-centric BYOD devices are insecure right off the bat. However intense focus on consumer adoption means they have traditionally been slow to implement features such as device encryption. In addition, they are not hardened to protect against physical attacks, and users are typically able to disable important security features such as an automatic lock screen or leave the login password blank.

Fortunately, business-centric tables powered by a new generation of Intel® Atom™ processors are becoming available, benefiting BYOD with enterprise security and manageability. Moreover, new generations of energy efficient microprocessors are also resulting in superior battery life and performance.

For example, the Dell Latitude 10 is a 10-inch tablet that brings the Windows experience to the tablet form factor. It is powered by a 1.8GHz Intel® Atom™ processor and the Windows 8 operating system. The underlying Intel® hardware allows it to run x86 software including legacy line-of-business apps. These are stored in its shockproof 64GB of SSD storage on top of 2GB of DDR2 RAM for memory.

The combination of Intel® Atom™ processor and Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator allows the tablet to stay up and running for up to 10 hours despite its slim tablet form factor. Moreover, its swappable design allows for spare battery packs to be purchased as necessary.

The Dell Latitude 10 is no slouch when it comes to usability. For one, IPS panel that offers a wide viewing angle found in the best desktop LCD monitors. In terms of its cameras, the Latitude 10 has a 2MP camera on the front, and an 8MP on the rear, while a standard micro-USB charging port offers compatibility with other smartphones and tablets out there.

The Latitude 10 incorporates a host of business-centric capabilities more reminiscent of higher-end laptops. For one, it incorporates hardware TPM 1.2, or Trusted Platform Module for better password protection and strengthening full disk encryption schemes such as Microsoft’s BitLocker. Finally, other business-friendly features include a SD card slot for memory expansion, a mini-HDMI port for connecting to an external display, and a full-size USB 2.0 port that opens the door to an entire plethora of USB peripherals.

This is a paid post in conjunction with IDG, Dell and Intel®