BYOD or Not? Evaluating The Options For Your RIA – RIA Tech Talk Episode #12

Todd Darroca:

Hello and welcome to the RIA TikTok podcast, brought to you by RIA Workspace. I’m Todd Rocha, and alongside me is Dave kake. And together we’re on a mission to simplify the complex world of technology for RIAs just like yours. Now in the podcast, we’ll be your tech guides breaking down those often confusing tech topics into plain and practical terms for you. So we hope you join us each episode as we dive into the latest tech trends, share our expert insights and help you navigate the ever-changing world of RIA technology. So David, how are you doing this morning, this afternoon, this evening, depending on when people are listening to this.

David Kakish:

Fantastic. I am fantastic. How about you, Todd?

Todd Darroca:

I’m doing well. I’m doing well. So, hey, so today we’re talking about to BYOD or not evaluating the options for your RIA. Now, we’re not talking about bringing your own booze in, of course, we’re talking about bringing your own devices in this world of remote work, personal computers, business computers, the overlap and all that stuff. So that’s why I’m glad we’re talking about it today and why obviously we know about it for the general reasons, David, why this stuff is important. But from your perspective, why is the BYOD putting out a policy or best practices important for the crowd listening in here?

David Kakish:

Yeah, sure. Yeah, Todd, thank you. And I want to welcome you. I want to welcome the listener and I want to thank you for bringing up this topic. Last time we talked, we were like, yeah, hey, you know what? I think

Todd Darroca:

BYOD good for some things. Yeah,

David Kakish:

It would be really good. And actually I’m really excited to talk about this. It didn’t even occur to me, but because I mean, we work with RIAs a lot and we have a lot of insights because of that. And I think with bring your own device or employees using their personal computers or their personal phones and so on, there’s a lot of hype and there’s a lot of confusion about that. And when you look out there, whether it’s in magazines or tech magazines or business magazines and so on, they talk about BYOD in general terms, employees using their personal devices in general terms, what does this mean to healthcare or what does this mean to banking or education industry or whatever? I don’t really care what I care about an RIA with roughly about five to 25 employees because that’s the segment we work with.

That’s what we focus on. That’s who we work with in day in and day out. So how a healthcare provider or a bank or an educational institution with a thousand plus employees or students or whatever, whatever, that’s great. That doesn’t really apply to the world that we live in every single day. And so I think what I’ve seen, what I’ve seen is there’s just not a lot of information out there for that RIA with five to 25 employees about this. So that’s number one. And I love to talk about, hey, here’s how it is in the real world. This is what we’re seeing out there. Not in academic theories or articles, articles where it’s a journalist talking, but he’s got no hands-on experience. So I’m always hesitant when I’m reading things by academics because I’m like, hang on, how does that apply in the real world? And we’ve all had the professor that whatever taught you something, you’re like, dude, you go to the business world and it doesn’t apply. But the other one interesting. And people don’t think about this as journalists. So journalists will sometimes write, talk, or do about a topic or something and they have no idea what it’s like in the real world.

Todd Darroca:

So I will firsthand experience, I used to be a broadcast journalist and I remember writing things, whether it was technology or emergency services or government policy stuff we never did because you literally had three hours to learn a topic before you had to go on air or whatever. So totally. Now reporters out there, I have empathy for you. I love you all. Don’t be write me in. It’s

David Kakish:

True. They’re not our audience, Todd. It’s okay. That’s true. It’s true.

Todd Darroca:

But it’s true. Yeah. I mean there was no real world experience of again, walking in their shoes. So no, I can totally see that perspective from what you’re saying there. So

David Kakish:

Why it’s important to, yeah, thanks Todd. I did not know that. That’s pretty interesting. You’re confirming my suspicion. It’s funny. Alright, so for an RIA, like yours, right? Roughly five to 25 employees, it’s important for you for two reasons. Number one, not enough people are talking about BYOD for this specific space. There’s not a lot of information out there. And then the other thing is, in the last three years or so since the pandemic, there’s been really two big shifts in the RIA industry. Number one is a lot of employees are working from home now, whereas before the pandemic, it was a typical, Hey, Monday through Friday, eight to five, you’re working in the office 80, 90% of the time, and now a lot of employees are working remote or there’s a hybrid environment. So that’s one. And then the other thing too is your own clients, your own clients no longer want to come in and meet with you in person.

Whereas before the pandemic, that was kind of standard, Hey, let’s set up a meeting. Either you go out and meet them in their home or office or whatever, or they would come to your office and meet with you. Clients just want to do it over an online video meeting now. So those are things that have really shifted in the last three years. So listen, my hope is you’re listening to me, you’re listening to me and Todd, my hope is that by the end of the session together here, you’ve got a lot of clarity around what is BYOD for an RIA, what’s best for your RIA? And again, I’m going to dive into it, I’ll talk about that. And again, I don’t talk in academic theories. I’m talking about what we’re seeing in the real world out there.

Todd Darroca:

Nice. Alright, so get your notepads out or smartphones where we’re going to start. We’re going to start with the smartphones and handheld devices. So yeah, I mean I’ve got at minimum probably two devices on me at all times. One my work, one my personal, but obviously things cross over. So let’s start there, David.

David Kakish:

Yeah, so just to kind of break it out a little bit, I’m going to talk, bring employees, bringing in their own devices. I’m going to break it into two categories to simplify it. Smartphones that includes handhelds, whether it’s Androids, iPhones, even iPads, tablets and so on. And then the second category is computers, desktops, laptops, windows, Macs and so on. So for the first part, I’m just going to talk a little bit about the smartphones. And again, iPhones, I’ll use an iPhone, what I use, but the same thing would apply to an Android or any other iPad or tablet that you’re using. So the way that we see that out there, vast majority of RIAs employees are using their personal iPhone to access company resources. And the logic for that is they don’t want to have a separate phone for work and then a phone for home, a personal phone and a work phone.

There are some companies that do that, but it’s very rare. I would say that that’s RIAs, again, I’m talking RIAs. I would say that’s probably less than 10%. So if you were to survey a hundred RIAs, and I haven’t done the survey this way formally, it’s just informally, I bet you less even than 5% are handing out employees and saying, Hey, here’s an iPhone for work, and then you keep your own iPhone at home or Android or whatever. And the reason for that is actually pretty simple. We actually have the ability to secure all of your company applications on your iPhone. And what I mean by that is, again, think of a B, C advisors, 10 employees, they have their personal iPhones. The biggest thing most of these people want is the ability to access their email on their phone, on their smartphone. And so the way we set that up is, yeah, absolutely.

You can go ahead. You can access company resources, however that iPhone needs to meet the RIAs IT compliance requirements. So for example, if the password is 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, it’s too simple of a password, you’re not going to be able to connect the do outlook and work and do that. And so as long as that personal computer meets the IT compliance requirements for your RIA, fantastic, they can access company applications and they can work. And again, the big one is email, right? Outlook email is typically what we’re using. And so a couple of things just related to that, then I’ll turn it back to you, Todd. The big question we get is like, well, what can they do on this phone between personal, between business and so on? And so the way to think about that is what we’ve done on that phone is we’ve created a separate logical container, a separate logical and secure container. And what that means is I can’t take an Outlook email, copy it and put it in my Apple Notes. And so it’s really nice because it’s a complete separation. And then Todd, if you no longer work for our RIA, fantastic, we can wipe out everything that’s work related remotely. And then anything that’s personal, that’s fine, that stays on the phone, it doesn’t affect that at all. And we don’t have any visibility in what you’re doing on the personal side of

Todd Darroca:

IPhone. I was going to ask you that. So how much visibility, do they know what apps I’ve downloaded on my other stuff that’s not work and how much time I’m spending on it and all that stuff? Or is that you say no idea. Yeah, no

David Kakish:

Idea. Because again, think of what we’ve done is we’ve created a logical, secure container for all of the work applications that you would be using on that smartphone. And that’s what we’re able to see, manage, control and wipe out. I can’t see what you’re doing on your personal safari. I can’t see doing an Apple Notes. I can’t do any of that right there. And again, if you were to think about that, it’s kind of funny, I don’t know, over 80% of the time people want the ability to access their email on their phone. That’s kind of the big one. And so that’s how we do that. But there are other things that you can do on the phone. So I just wanted to talk a little bit about that because there’s a little bit of confusion. Now, again, some businesses less than 10%, some RIAs, less than 10% make the decision say no, we just want to give that employee a work iPhone and they can keep their personal one.

When you look at the cost on that, it adds up pretty fast. It’s the cost of the iPhone, they’re not cheap. And then it’s the cost of the plan and all that fun, and it just kind of adds up really fast. So we accommodate both, but I would say 90, 95% of clients are allowing employees to use their smartphones. We’re just creating that separate secure, logical container. Again, the way you work on it, Todd, it feels like it’s all local. There’s nothing different. It feels like just another application, but there is a separate logical container for it.

Todd Darroca:

I think I know what you will say here, but as far as apps, obviously we’ve got a lot of video people on their phones for video meetings and for even just sharing very sensitive information, are there apps that work better? I know many companies use Slack or Microsoft Teams and they use Zoom or Google Hangout or Video meetup, whatever that may be. In this case, again, in the BYOD umbrella here, are there apps that are I guess better, more secure or better to be using than normal open source kind of stuff? Or do you kind of see a mix of it? Yeah,

David Kakish:

So I’m going to make fun of open source here for a minute and then I’ll answer your question. So I’m like, listen, open source is great if you’re a college kid where you’re broke a lot of time. It’s terrible if you have a little bit of money and you don’t have a lot of time, right?

Todd Darroca:

That’s right. That’s right.

David Kakish:

So this is sort of my joke about open source, right? In the RIA space we’re in, the two really big players really is Microsoft Teams and Zoom. Those are the two really big players. Yes, there’s ways to secure ’em and do all that type of stuff, but you’ve got to remember a lot of the advisors, a lot of our clients that people we work with, trying to do all that stuff on a small screen on an iPhone is really hard. They’re typically doing their Zoom meetings and all that stuff on their computer. And this is probably my segue to the next topic, but very few people are actually, they’re not like my kids and your kids where they’re doing every single thing on the iPhone or at least my kids. But I am shocked at what they see on that little screen. And so I’ll be helping them with their homework and I go, I can’t see that. I need to bring up my iPad. So a lot of our clients are the same way. They’re doing certain things on the iPhone, but if you’re doing a teams meeting or a Zoom meeting, you’re probably using your computer.

Todd Darroca:

Got it. Alright, so let’s go to computers now. Let’s talk about, same thing here. We got, I mean, I carry my obviously independent consultant. I carry my own personal computer, but I actually do have a work computer that’s literally just for work because so many clients, they may require different things. So I’m interested in this case in the industry, can companies allow their employees to use their own laptops or does there become a demarcation line where it’s like, Hey, now we’re working with X, Y, and Z and they’re requiring us to have you on a separate computer because of security reasons, all that stuff.

David Kakish:

Are you a Mac user or Windows or do you have one of each? I’m curious.

Todd Darroca:

I have, oh, I’m only a Mac user. Windows makes me, I have to work really hard to figure out what I’m mean, but no, I’m a Mac guy. I’m a Mac guy.

David Kakish:

Sounds good. Sounds good. Yeah, look, I mean, same applies Windows or Mac, right? It’s indifferent and I should say so. Okay, so number one, we talked about the smartphones. Hopefully for you as a listener, you’ve got some clarity around what typical RIAs are doing and what we can do to secure that because cybersecurity is an important part of that. Now, let’s talk a little bit about computers. And when I talk about computers, that could be a Windows, that could be a Mac, it could be a desktop, it could be a laptop. It doesn’t really matter that much.

So the way that we see that right now, it’s very rare that employees are using their personal computers for work. Most RIAs like to keep that complete separation because again, you’ve got to think a typical RIA has millions in a UM, sometimes billions and cybersecurity IT compliance is really important for them and they just don’t want the risk of potentially something happening. And frankly, generally speaking, they can’t wrap their head around what’s the demarcation or the separation between a personal computer and a work computer. And I’ll talk about that here in a minute. But again, I would say over 90% of RIAs prefer for employees to use a work computer and not use their personal computers. Just again, cybersecurity IT compliance, there’s are huge in this space, and that’s what we see out there. Now, the other, so that’s kind of what we’re seeing now.

One of the things that really took off right before the pandemic around the pandemic too was virtual desktop cloud computers, virtual computers, whatever you want to call that. And I kind of jokingly say the false promise of VDI or cloud computer because that infrastructure and that technology was built for applications and for software and email, not for voice. Listen, we work with a lot of RIAs and we know intimately the difficulties and the pain of trying to do video or audio over a virtual desktop infrastructure or a virtual computer. It’s just a nightmare. It doesn’t work. And so what happens is you’ve got all this VDI infrastructure, and the reason I’m talking about VDI is in theory that was something really good because people would be using their personal computer and then they would log into an Amazon workspace that’s completely separated. And yes, if you’re doing applications and CRM and email and all that stuff, it works fantastic.

However, if you’re trying to do what we are doing right now, a Zoom video call or an audio call or teams or anything, it’s a total nightmare. And so what was happening with a lot of these prospects that were coming to us saying, look, we need to be able to talk on video and audio with our clients, and we end up working outside of the environment. And then some of our employees are emailing documents that they shouldn’t be emailing because now they’re working outside the environment. And then it just became a real hodgepodge. So the promise of virtual desktop infrastructure, cloud computers and so on was fantastic for applications for email and everything else, but video and audio, it was very, very problematic. So again, lemme go back to my main point. Over 90% of RIAs, they’re giving a company issued laptop or computer for their employees.

Now it’s very common where you have a leadership team or an owner where he works in the office, he works at home, he works at a vacation home, three, four different locations, does not want to carry his laptop around or her laptop. And so that’s fine. There’s a desktop in his office, desktop in his main home, and then another desktop in their vacation home, jumps around, works on all three, doesn’t miss a beat. Works is very productive. As an example, I work from home every other Tuesday, but I work in the office all the time the rest of the time. So my setup is I have a Windows computer at the office, and then I have a MacBook for work that I use at home. So I’m not taking my laptop and my MacBook back and forth. I’m in the office. I’m using Windows that once I’m home on Tuesdays, I’m using that MacBook, I’m productive, I can jump back and forth.

I can do all that right there. And so that was another promise of VDI and virtual computers that you can jump on different devices and not miss a beat. We can do that now for the less than 10% that want employees to use their personal computers. And generally we see that with a new RIA or breakaway RIA, they’re starting out and they don’t want to invest a lot of money. There’s ways to do that. I don’t want to get too much into the weeds on that, but generally what we’re doing is it’ll be Todd’s personal login. So Todd at home, and then we’ll create a Todd at work, a separate login on that computer, and then bless you. I see that you’re

Todd Darroca:

Seeing the camera. I had myself on mute, so if you’re watching it, you’re like, what is he doing?

David Kakish:

Okay, so bless you. But again, yeah. So at personal computer, Todd wants to the RIA says, yeah, we’re okay with personal computers. What we would do is we would create taught at home, taught at work, and then we would manage everything taught at work as a separate container. I can tell you this from experience, employees are okay with it, but they’re not thrilled because in the back of their head, they’re like, can they see what I’m doing on my personal account on Facebook and YouTube and this and that? Plus they’re not thrilled to be using their personal computer for work. So generally speaking, a lot of clients might start out that way, or well, some clients might start out that way, but in the long run, they just end up buying, buying a computer for that employee because then demarcation is very, very clean. And we, you as an RIA, we as a IT partner, we have full control over a work laptop, but we don’t have full control over a personal laptop. There are things that we’re not able to do because that’s a personal machine. So anyways, that’s a little bit about computers, desktops, laptops, and so on. So Todd, I’ll turn it to you. Any questions about insights?

Todd Darroca:

I know about A VPN, I don’t want to go in the weeds of it, but do you see many clients using A VPN so that they’re, and maybe because most of the things are cloud-based now, but to log in and so that way they can do what you’re doing from home and not having to worry about private information or confidential information getting out there in a secure, secure kind of pipeline, do you see much of that? Or is this

David Kakish:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So the biggest ways that clients are using the VPN right now, like the traditional VPN, like a SonicWall VPN or a Cisco VPN or something like that, is if they have a server in their office and they’re working from home, and so they need to connect to their server in the office. So typically the typical setup is I’ve got, let’s just say a SonicWall VPN in my office, I’m working from home, I’m going to VPN from my home office to the Sonic Wealth Firewall slash vpn, so I can access the server that’s in my office. So the way that we do that with our clients is whether you’re working in the office or whether you’re working at home on that work computer, you’re work experience is the same because we have that next generation client list, VPN already built in. So you don’t have to click on the SonicWall VPN or this is called VPN, and then that computer meets the compliance requirements. So for example, if I’m working at the office, my work experience is exactly the same as if I’m working from home. It doesn’t change, I don’t have to click on A VPN. But to answer your question, yes, there are some clients where they still need to use that VPN to access company resources in their office.

Todd Darroca:

Got it. So I have more of a soft skill question. So we’ve got your example of executive has a vacation home, a cabin in the woods or wherever, and then you have an employee nine to five coming in. And how do you approach when an employee, let’s say whoever it is, says, well, I want to be able to, I want to do everything from my personal computer too, instead of having two computers or whatever. Are there any kind of tips that you would tell somebody who is an RA starting out on their own or their own business or just internally too, for those who may be in the C-suite, when they have employees asking that question of, well, why couldn’t I do that? What is the backdrop, I guess?

David Kakish:

Yeah, so that question of employees doing that doesn’t really come up a lot. Well, here, let me talk a little bit. So we want to make a distinction between the partners and the leadership team and then just regular employees at that company. There is that distinction, and that really becomes prominent with the new RIA or with the breakaway RIA. So think of these as two separate groups, generally speaking, I would say for employees, almost always, Hey, here’s a company computer ahead and use that. That’s what you’re going to use for work. And generally speaking, the employees happy. The partner and the leadership team are happy because they have full control over that laptop. That’s kind of the setup a lot, lot of partners, people on the leadership team, it’s they’re typically working a lot more hours, right? Sure. So they’re typically working in the office and then at their home, and then they’re vacationing someplace else where they spend time. And so it’s very common for them to have three desktops, right? Office, home, and then let’s just call it a vacation home. So Cleveland, Ohio is the office, and then the suburbs of Cleveland is his home office. And then, I don’t know, Tampa, Florida is his vacation home, right?

Todd Darroca:

One day I will have that ability to say, I have a vacation home in Tampa.

David Kakish:

So very, very common, very common setup. And so for them, it’s like, I don’t want to carry a laptop around. Great, no problem. Those different machines are set up so that I leave. It’s just like, don’t go too far. I have that same setup. I just don’t have the vacation home. I use

Todd Darroca:

Airbnb. Yes, you do, David, you’ve got like four. No, I’m kidding.

David Kakish:

So I jump from my work computer at the office to my work computer at home, and I don’t miss it being at all. And it works really well. And most employees aren’t necessarily asking for that. Maybe they just don’t have their vacation home yet. So especially with the new breakaway, RIA, the leadership team or the founding partners, they’re completely okay with saying, oh yeah, this is my personal computer. Go ahead and put the agent, lock it down. Whereas an employee, they don’t want to do all that stuff on their personal computer. And I think that’s kind of the difference, right? Got it. But again, we’re putting all the security mechanisms and all of the IT compliance on that, managing partner’s computer, it doesn’t matter. We just make sure that it’s completely locked down.

Todd Darroca:

Got it. So we’ve covered two key things today for the listener and the watcher to take off. And so first smartphones. David, quick takeaway on that one. Oh, I got a thumbs up. Just if you’re watching, I don’t know why I did that, but my bad, I had a little thumbs up emoji. Yeah, so we’re talking about, so first off is smartphones.

David Kakish:

Yeah. Key things. I’ve talked a lot. The key things that I’d leave you with is like listen on smartphones, bring employees using their personal smartphone. It’s great. It works really well. You don’t need to give them a company issued smartphone because it’s great from a security perspective and from a usability perspective. And I kind of talked about that. So smartphones, yeah, that’s fine. Have your employees go ahead and use their smartphones. Just make sure that you lock down any work related applications that they’re accessing on that smartphone.

Todd Darroca:

Got it. Personal computers versus work computers.

David Kakish:

Yeah. So personal computers for employees ain’t so great. I’ll just, I kind of talked about that. You can do it, right? You don’t have full control over that endpoint, but it ain’t so great. And what’s going to happen is your employees with time are going to come back and say, Hey, can we just get a company computer?

Todd Darroca:

And then on the flip side, personal computers for those partners and leadership team members,

David Kakish:

That would work really well, especially in the early days of a new RIA. And a lot of times those partners, the leadership team, the partners, they don’t want to have that separation. They’re like, listen, this is sort of my life, right? Then I do everything here and that’s fine. Now, some of it will make that separation, but if you don’t, that’s completely okay because we’re going to treat that personal computer and really lock it down even though it is a personal computer.

Todd Darroca:

Got it. So we are, I don’t know if we’re in the wild, wild west anymore of BYOD, but I think we’re still learning kind of best practices. And so today, I think, I hope that many of you listening and watching are getting a little better footing of what to do when this comes up in your business or with your employees. So of course, David awesome on the information here and in given us some sound advice. But one thing that we always love to hear is some real world examples from you guys out there in listener viewer world. So what we’d love to hear from you is stories of, Hey, this is how I did this in my company, or maybe even tragically some horror stories of this is what happened when you don’t do this kind of thing. We’d love to see and hear those stories and maybe have you on the show at one point or another, but well anyways, so thanks again today listening on the BYD to BYD or not BYD.

So obviously we’ve got all these episodes online@www.riaworkspace.com, our proud sponsor of the podcast. And all you have to do is go to the learn more or the resources tab in the learning center, and you’ll be able to get all of these podcasts and episodes for free. We’d love for you to subscribe and the show as well. And that way turn those notifications on, and you’ll automatically get us in your mobile feed or on your desktop and without even trying, kind of creepy. But hey, we’re always here for you. So hey guys, thanks again for listening. Feel free to reach out to David or myself for any questions. And again, we hope you have a great day, and we’ll see you next time. Thanks everybody.