A recent survey by an IT security product company has suggested 34 per cent of companies do not use dedicated Mobile Device Management (MDM), putting their organisations at high risk of data breaches. The survey which questioned over 5,000 senior IT managers from companies around the world found most companies fail to pay adequate attention to securing corporate mobile devices and the data stored on them. Furthermore, 15 per cent of respondents said they have no plans to implement a MDM solution in the future.
Mobile threats have evolved dramatically over the last two years, says Kaspersky Lab. As more and more Android devices have come online, the amount of malware targeting Google’s operating system has grown rapidly. Meanwhile, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies have become increasingly popular as with more and more employees are actively using their personal devices for work, eg 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 these problems, 28 per cent of the companies surveyed said they had dedicated MDM solutions that were already in use and 29 per cent have partially implemented MDM. But partial implementation cannot ensure the security of all mobile devices and the data stored in them.
