Customer Self Service brings so many benefits to individuals and in this we are all using our I-Phone, Samsung Note or I-Pad to operate the sites that offer this and the companies behind this easy to assist in P2P services or enterprise interactive websites, see nothing wrong with this, until that is we step into intellectual property space, where our corporate data is valuable and must be guarded, so many companies do not even see the risks that are there when this happens and the ones that do, cannot build enough of a deterrent to stop it, not at a realistic cost anyway.

BYOD is a problem, many use their own devices because they have the most up to date products and the CIO budget cannot stretch to this, so many ignore it in the hope that the Microsoft Lync product or the IBM lotus solution will deliver it as part of the package….unfortunately not!

Each CIO who has helped his company build out more innovative customer self-service through web and social collaborative tools, needs to see that mobility will help the response to the community they are involved with and in this having not secure or button down connections using VOIP or Instant Messaging, could be the downfall of any organisation whose customers are stolen, whose individual identities are compromised, whose calls are hijacked, must you wait for that attack and expect the worst, because the CEO and shareholders will not be amused.

It is natural as we approach an IP (now IPV6) only world to use the cost effective VOIP or IM, why else should we be set in the past, as in the case of BYOD to remain ahead of the curve when being on Facebook or LinkedIn or any other real-time virtual environment.

We need to get a balance and that is the reclassification of ‘Persona Management’, take back control, but the CIO must employ the advance technology also and in this should expect that their SIP fire walls to achieve the security needed, they should expect that the BYOD has an authentication ability for these controllers in and around the Enterprise to do the job set out by having so many new dynamics at once, which is to allow, enjoy the ROI and be secure.

We are seeing the catch up begin, the SIMalliance have finally published an open API for Secure element writing in the Smart Card, this will allow authentication without publication and on the Secure SIP VOIP and IM side we are seeing products that do not cost as much as the data centre to deploy, which will be inter-operable to the secure element, but at a realistic cost for the CIO and keep the Social Self-Service collaboration going.