National News
Personal Devices Pose Biggest Threat To Corporate Security
November 19, 2013 posted by Steve Brownstein
Security software provider, Check Point, has found that 93 percent of US and UK companies use mobile devices to connect to corporate networks, while 67 percent allow employees to connect personal devices.
The same Check Point survey showed that 52 percent of large companies said they lost more than $500,000 in security-related incidents in 2012, and those losses came from careless employees more often than criminals.
According to Steve Ackx, director at professional services firm PwC, employee-related security problems will occur whether the company has a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policy use or not.
"BYOD is unavoidable," he says, explaining that employees will often read company emails or download documents on their personal and mobile devices whether they are officially permitted to do so or not.
That said, Check Point found that different mobile operating systems have different risks, with 49 percent of respondents saying that Google's Android platform is the most dangerous, compared to Apple, Windows Phone, and Blackberry.
To prevent these risks, companies install encryption, require strong passwords, and use mobile device management (MDM), which allows the contents of a mobile device to be wiped if it gets lost.
Mr. Ackx warns that many employees may actually delay reporting their lost device because of MDM; they "don't want to lose their holiday photographs," he says.
In order to provide better mobile security, Mr. Ackx advises organizations to instead "take appropriate measures to secure [company] data" adding that
"There is no silver bullet solution."
