One in five companies has suffered a data breach involving mobile devices according to a study recently published by Crowd Research Partners. 39% of respondents said malware had been downloaded onto devices supplied to employees by their company or used under BYOD schemes, and almost a quarter of respondents said devices had connected to malicious Wi-Fi networks.
The number of devices that had been compromised is a concern; however, what is more worrying is the extent to which organizations are monitoring the devices that are allowed to connect to their networks. When asked whether devices had connected to malicious networks, 48% of respondents said they were not sure.
When asked whether malware had been downloaded onto mobile devices, 35% said they were not sure, and 37% could not say whether mobile devices were involved in security breaches at their organizations. These results suggest that while mobile devices are allowed to connect to work networks, the controls put in place to keep those devices secure were insufficient in many organizations.
When asked about the risk control measures used to keep devices secure, only 63% said the devices were protected with passwords. In the event of theft or loss of devices, only 49% would be able to remotely delete data on the devices. Just 43% of organizations used data encryption to prevent the exposure of data in the event of device loss or theft.