65% of companies believe that BYOD is a growing threat to business security
Most companies comprehend the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend; where in employees use their personal mobile devices for work purposes, as a mounting threat to business. Even in the state of such affairs, the percentage of companies undertaking measures to minimize this threat and rising to the occasion is relatively small, as per the in – depth results of the Global Corporate IT Security Risks 2013 survey which was conducted by B2B International in collaboration with Kaspersky Lab. This survey involved 2,895 interviews with representatives of companies from 24 countries.
The Respondents in Japan went on to express the utmost concern regarding this trend which is on the rise coupled with its associated threats which trail along. Here, 93% agreed that BYOD is a threat to their business. The Companies in North America (69%) also voiced a high level of concern, as did those in the Middle East (65%) followed by Western Europe (62%). While Russian companies were the least concerned, with 57% of the participants acknowledging any threat posed by a BYOD policy.
Simultaneously, most companies do not plan to familiarize any prohibitive measures against the use of personal devices at the workplace. On the contrary, about 31% of respondents opined that they plan to embolden the use of personal smartphones and tablets at work, while another 34% said they did not believe that prohibitive measures would prevent employees from using their own devices.
Nevertheless, the percentage of companies planning to restrict the use of personal devices for work purposes is on the rise: the number of respondents reporting plans to impose restrictions was up by 6% from 19% in 2012 to 25% in 2013. The percentage of companies planning to impose more stringent restrictions against the use of personal devices at work is unchanged from last year, at 10%.
It’s easy to see why there are growing business concerns about threats posed by mobile devices: the survey also shows that the improper use of these devices is a frequent cause of IT security incidents, resulting in the loss of critical company data. Nearly 18% (2% more than in 2012) of respondents said their companies had suffered confidential data leaks through mobile email clients, text messaging, and other channels available to smartphone and tablet owners.
But comparatively few companies are adopting specialized software products to protect themselves against such threats. Around 40% of companies are using antivirus solutions to integrate, protect and manage mobile devices on the corporate network, and only 24% (2% fewer than in 2012) use Mobile Device Management solutions.
The importance of mobile security and management can be summarized as BYOD becomes more commonplace and the number of incidents involving mobile devices grows, ensuring the centralized management of these devices and keeping them secure. It is quintessential to make note that the solutions performing these functions are easy to use, easy to manage and easy to integrate into the corporate network.
Setting the stakes high in this realm, Kaspersky Security for Mobile is accessible either as a targeted solution or as a component of Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Business. Specifications and technicalities are zeroed in here, will witness that a mobile agent is installed at device level to provide advanced protection against anti-malware threats, while Mobile Device Management (MDM) makes the secure configuration of mobile devices painless and forthright. Also, corporate data can be isolated and encrypted in a container on the personal device, and thanks to Remote Find, Lock and Wipe, this data can be deleted if the device is lost or stolen. A single unified administrative console means that all corporate endpoints, including BYOD mobile devices, can be managed together in one integrated security platform.
