[By NBC-1TV H.J Yook]SolarWinds (NYSE: SWI), a leading provider of powerful and affordable IT management software, today cautioned that accelerating trends to ‘bring your own device’ (BYOD) and inadequate mobile device management (MDM) are placing corporate networks at risk globally.

Despite the widely recognized problems of BYOD, a recent SolarWinds survey disclosed that over 65 percent of organizations feel they do not have the tools necessary to manage non-company issued mobile devices on their network. At a recent SolarWinds MDM webinar, only 18 percent of participants said they have rolled out a mobile device management program. Most had not formulated a plan of action.

“These alarming statistics suggest that a surprising number of corporate networks are facing security risks, or the dangers of crashes or unacceptably slow speeds capable of impacting on business continuity,” said SolarWinds Senior Manager Masami Hashimoto. “This obvious lack of visibility into the potential problems has network engineers worried.”

SolarWinds has issued the following advice to network administrators, to help organizations counter problems with both BYOD and MDM:

· Start by assessing what devices are on the network and where they are connecting. Consider leveraging user device tracking software to track which devices and users are connecting to which switch ports (both wired and wireless) on the network over time and alert the administrator to switch port capacity issues. Think of it as a switch port mapper on steroids.

· Understand the performance impacts that rogue or uninvited devices are having on the network. Use an existing network management system and enable flow-based traffic analysis to understand where the network utilization issues are, and who and what is consuming bandwidth. Mobile devices may be consuming more than administrators think, or it may turn out there are bigger problems with bandwidth hogs running on ‘approved’ devices.

· In parallel, start gathering requirements from the various departments supported by the network. Determine how they are using their mobile devices today and how they would like to use them in the future, and reconcile this with your organization's security policies.

“Once techs understand the impact of BYOD on their network and have determined the right balance between user desire and corporate policies, the next steps will be much clearer,” said Hashimoto.