Just last week, my iPad was stolen from my car. At the time, I had it powered on with my business email account open. Within an hour, I was able to get my service provider to remotely wipe it clean of all data.

While I lost the information and photos I had on the tablet when I wiped it clean, doing so was my choice to make. But in some workplaces, the decision wouldn’t have been mine. An employer could have made it for me.

Mobile is here, and it’s hot. But as more employers embrace the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) movement, questions abound over whether the workplace and the worker are ready for the heated issues that are cropping up. Concerns with using personal devices for business purposes range from expectations of personal privacy to how to control security breaches.

“BYOD is like the Wild West, rules are being created and changed on the fly,” says Ilan Sredni, an Information Technology expert and CEO of Palindrome Consulting in Miami.

A variety of dynamics are driving the Bring Your Own Device trend. Workers are more satisfied when we use our own preferred devices and using our tablets, smartphones and laptops saves an employer money in buying and maintaining equipment. A recent study by CIOInsight shows companies where employees bring their own devices to work save an average of $1,000 per year per employee in service costs alone.

With continuous new technology, many employees want the latest gadgets and ability to balance their work and home lives on their devices — iPhones and iPads or Android- and Windows-based mobile devices. “For me, the iPad is the best on-the-road solution,” said Jeanette Rodriguez, a Boca Raton financial consultant.

“I can Facetime my family or pull up a document from my hotel.”

At some Broward Health System’s hospitals, doctors roam the facilities with their own preferred laptops and tablets, updating patient orders and scouring records online. Dr. Jean-Jacques Rajter, a Fort Lauderdale pulmonologist and former chief medical information officer at Broward Health, says it’s an advantage to have a portable computer at your fingertips to show an image to a patient with a tap on the screen. He uses a laptop that converts into a tablet, enabling him to review his patients’ office and hospital charts at the same time. He accesses information through a Citrix program that stores information in the cloud, he explains. “No patient information is housed on the device.”

Of course, the hospital has taken security precautions and encrypts the doctor’s personal device so if it is lost or stolen, it remotely will be wiped clean — which protects patient privacy. Even more, if the hospital wants, it can track Rajter’s location through the device. And, Rajter must use the hospital system’s user interface designed for desktops, which he says lacks full functionality for looking at charts. “There’s still tremendous room for improvement in the user experience,” Rajter says. “These are the trade-offs for convenience.”

While the hospital has a formal BYOD program, other businesses are allowing it on a more casual, individual basis. And, with the surge in smartphone and tablet popularity, employees are bringing them to work and tapping into company networks, whether employers permit it or not.