Credit: Paul Trummer/TravelLightar/DPA/PA Images

Employee usage of Transport for London’s bring-your-own-device programme has shot up in the last 15 months, with thousands of staff devices being accredited under the scheme.

A report from think tank Parliament Street reveals that, in the 2016/17 year, TfL had 816 staff devices registered under its BYOD policy, according to data released under the Freedom of Information Act. Over the course of 2017/18, this figure shot up to 2,328 – a rise of 185%.

During the opening three months of the new financial year, a further 1,326 devices have been registered, taking the total tally up to a potential 3,654.

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This means that as many as one in seven of the transport authority’s 26,000 employees is taking advantage of its BYOD programme.

A TfL spokesperson said: “We take personal security management extremely seriously, and each device has a unique password. We regularly analyse our authorised user database and our information security policies are refreshed to address the changing cyber threat landscape.”

Of the 1,326 devices registered so far in FY19, 606 are iPhones – equating to 47.5% of the total. The 469 Samsung devices registered equate to 35.4%. In a very distant third place are iPads with 43 registrations, ahead of 19 each for Huawei devise and Google Pixels, 15 for Sony Xperia units, and 6 HTC products.

The Parliament Street report said: “This research project has shed insight into one the country’s most complex organisations and revealed it to have a growing BYOD scheme. This is a bold move when you consider that many government departments have outlawed BYOD altogether. Overall, TfL appears to be enabling its employees to work on devices relevant to their needs, thus saving time and money.”