Around nine in ten firms believe the greatest threat to mobile security within their organisation comes from careless employees, according to recently published research.
In a survey carried out by Dimensional Research, around 87 per cent of respondents believed that the greater security threat to mobile devices was careless employees. Nearly two-thirds of respondents also believed that recent high-profile breaches of customer data were likely due to employee carelessness.
The survey of 700 professionals in the UK, US, Australia, Canada and Germany found that 95 per cent of respondents face challenges with securing and supporting Bring Your Own Device (BYOD).
So far in 2014, the cost of remediation in mobile security incidents has increased. Of the IT executives surveyed, 42 per cent said that mobile security incidents cost their organisations more than $250,000.
Despite employee carelessness with mobile devices, their use has proliferated with 91 per cent of IT professionals seeing an increase in the number of personal mobile devices connecting to their networks over the past two years. In 2014, 56 per cent of those surveyed managed business data on employee-owned devices, up from 37 per cent in 2013.
Of the respondents to the poll, 82 per cent expect the number of security incidents to increase in 2015. Nearly all of the respondents (98 per cent) voiced concerns about the impact of a mobile security incident, with the greatest fear being the potential for lost and stolen information.
Android continued to be perceived as having the greatest security risks Android risk increased from 49 per cent in 2013 to 64 per cent this year, as the platform with greatest perceived security risk as compared to Apple, Windows Mobile, and Blackberry.
"It is clear that IT professionals are not seeing an end to mobile security threats, and in fact, are preparing for an increase of these incidents in 2015," said Dorit Dor, vice president of product at Check Point Software Technologies.
