New research commissioned by Absolute Software reveals that the benefits of consistent mobile policies is still not understood by businesses, despite widespread use of mobile devices in the workplace, both under bring your own device (BYOD) or corporate owned, personally-enabled (CoPE) environments. Nearly 85% of U.S. companies allow their employees to personally manage their own mobile devices, but only 45% require a password to access corporate networks and data – leaving a large gap in overall security.
Nearly every employee today uses a mobile device to access some form of company information or application, sanctioned or not. However, many organizations are inconsistent with their mobile policies, their security falling victim to the fragmentation of devices and services available to employees that choose them. Given the rate of adoption and the huge risks, we hope this information sparks companies to invest in consistent mobile practices.
Research firm Vanson Bourne conducted the survey on our behalf, surveying 600 IT decision makers from a variety of vertical sectors in the US along with 600 in the UK, France and Germany.
A Snapshot of Mobile Security in the US Workplace:
- 31% of companies surveyed do not have employee agreements in place to remotely lock devices and wipe data in the event of loss or theft
- 48% of companies require employees to purchase mobile anti-virus/malware software, despite tests showing the majority of mobile anti-virus solutions block less than 65% of malware detected
- 35% of respondents do not have a formal procedure for verifying and distributing apps
- 48% of companies surveyed do not have an app blacklist while 67% do use whitelisting to limit app access
- 59% of the time, apps are blacklisted for productivity reasons, with games blacklisted more often than social network, cloud-based, and photo apps
- Facebook was the most common blacklisted app, followed by Angry Birds and Dropbox respectively
- Despite email being the most commonly requested app by employees, 68% of apps developed in-house are internal communications apps
- 20% of companies rely solely on BYOD to support employees; 42% use a hybrid model of BYOD and CoPE
Join the discussion on Twitter by using or following #ABTstats or view the complete survey summary here.
Absolute Software Research Reveals US Businesses Lack Mobile Policies: New research commissioned by… http://t.co/n49Tv7C0 #outsourceit
31% of companies don’t require employees to agree to lock or wipe data in the event of device loss/theft #ABTstats http://t.co/Ecb9l6bU
[...] [...]
Mobile Application Management Survey Results #ABTstats
http://t.co/983ekUua
[...] makers from a variety of vertical sectors in the UK, France and Germany, comparing to the already released research of 600 IT decision makers in the [...]
New research reveals that the benefits of consistent mobile policies are still not understood by businesses: http://t.co/iUete7cr #ABTstats
20% of companies rely solely on BYOD to support employees; 42% use a hybrid model of BYOD and CoPE: http://t.co/iUete7cr #ABTstats
I have deployed over 25,000 wireless AP’s in education, healthcare, enterprise business, and manufacturing for wireless access and highly recommend having the right equipment to support and manage the BYOD onslaught. Enterprises that do not have the proper network infrastructure tend to have more issues with security, management and capacity. With the right equipment BYOD management and security is often built in.
[...] [...]
[...] [...]
[...] [...]
[...] Studies show that cloud-based storage apps such as Dropbox and Box were among the most banned on BYOD policies in 2012. A lot of IT organizations are blacklisting these apps: 57 percent banned Dropbox and 42 percent banned Box. Cloud-based productivity tool Evernote was also banned in 35 percent of the companies who had a blacklist. Facebook was the most common blacklisted app, followed by Angry Birds and Dropbox, respectively. But Facebook and Twitter are mostly banned for productivity issues, not for security. [...]
[...] En anglais : http://blogs.absolute.com/?p=8043 [...]
[...] particularly as employees don’t often use best-practices when it comes to security. Our own research revealed that nearly 85% of US companies allow employees to manage their own devices with only 45% [...]