The majority of companies have not fully implemented a policy for the use of wireless devices.
According to the results of a study that have recently been released, only 14 percent of companies have put a fully developed mobile security policy into place for their computer networks.
At the same time, the number of threats and incidents within that environment are rapidly rising.
Furthermore, the study also discovered that the majority of the companies that do not have mobile security policies in place also have no intention of limiting the use of personal smartphones and tablets for work-related purposes. The research in question was the Global Corporate IT Security Risks 2013 study From B2B International, which was conducted among businesses worldwide, this spring, in collaboration with Kaspersky Lab.
B2B International’s statement about the mobile security study was that many companies had experienced data leaks.
It revealed that among the respondents of the survey by B2B International, 6 percent of the companies had experienced a mobile security data leakage of confidential information at least once within the previous 12 months. Though this may represent an increase of only 1 percent over the figures from 2012, the attacks on smartphones and tablets led to a larger number of critical data leaks than any of employee fraud (at 4 percent), phishing attacks (at 5 percent) or corporate espionage (at 3 percent).
According to the release regarding the study’s results, “The reason is obvious; more mobile devices – smartphones and tablets – are being used at work on a daily basis. These devices are also often owned by the employees themselves, and so are used for personal as well as business purposes.”
It also pointed out that while the ability to add both corporate and personal data (such as apps and contact lists) on a single device is highly convenient, it also means that there is a considerably higher mobile security risk to the business. Almost 65 percent of the participants in the survey admitted that they allowed their workers to bring their own devices (also known as bring your own device – BYOD – where workers use their own personal smartphones and tablets for work purposes). This is clearly a growing threat to corporate IT infrastructure security when the fact that no protection policies have been put in place.
The study was conducted by Jumio, which determined that among all m-commerce users, 65 percent will abandon their carts before completing their transactions. More than half of those people have done so because they have concerns over the mobile security that is involved in providing their sensitive data over their smartphones and tablets in order to complete a purchase.