34% Cos Risk Data Breaches By Not Controlling Personal Devices In The Workplace

In November 2012 Kaspersky Lab, in association with market research specialists B2B International, conducted a survey of over 5,000 senior IT managers from companies around the world. The results revealed that most companies fail to pay adequate attention to securing corporate mobile devices and the data stored on them. In particular, 34 percent of the respondents said their companies did not use dedicated Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions.

Key Numbers

• 34 percent of companies do not use MDM solutions to protect their business; 15 percent of them do not plan to do so in the future

• 29 percent of companies have only partially implemented MDM solutions

• 28 percent of companies have fully implemented an MDM solution

Mobile threats have evolved dramatically over the last two years. As more and more Android devices have come online, so the amount of malware targeting Google’s operating system has seen explosive growth. Meanwhile, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies are increasingly popular, with more and more employees actively using their personal devices for work, e.g. for accessing company email. If a company does not regulate the use of personal smartphones and tablet PCs accessing the corporate IT infrastructure, it’s only a matter of time before confidential information starts to leak out of the system. A breach could be caused by a malware infection or an employee losing a device; the result is the same – data is lost or, worse, falls into the wrong hands.

To address the problems of personal and corporate mobile devices, dedicated MDM solutions are already in use at 28 percent of companies. Another 29 percent have partially implemented MDM. But partial implementation cannot ensure the security of all mobile devices and the data stored in them.