Survey: Mobile workers regularly breach IT policy

A quarter of UK businesses are experiencing security issues as a result of mobile workers using laptops or mobiles outside work, according to Vodafone.

The survey of 1,116 workers in the UK also revealed that 50 per cent did not know that there were different policies when using IT inside or outside of work. One in three had never read their employer's IT policy or didn't know it existed.

From the results Vodafone concluded that the new generation of mobile devices such as connected laptops and smartphones was the new challenge faced by the IT department. Workers were not taking care with the new devices, which could access corporate networks as well as have the potential to store large amounts of sensitive data.

The research indicated that even though many companies were setting remote and mobile working security policies, workers were just not following them properly.

"Not only is this due to the lack of knowledge or understanding on the part of the use, but also to lack of awareness in the IT department of effective solutions to extend and enforce security policies and practices," said Curt Hopkins, head of enterprise mobility solutions at Vodafone.

Vodafone claimed that though businesses were seeing major benefits from mobile working, these efforts could be undermined by these IT policy failures.

This week also saw Gartner reveal their take on the new smartphone threats.