Companies are not offering sufficient IT support to mobile workers, even though the number of employees working remotely is set to increase over the coming years.
This is the finding of joint research carried out between analyst firm Ovum and secure remote support vendor Bomgar, which surveyed 300 IT decision makers across the UK, France and Germany.
Nearly 25 per cent of all employees at the respondents' businesses were classified as mobile to some degree and all 300 said they would be increasing their level of support for remote workers over the next 18 months.
However, while remote support technology is used by over three quarters of respondents to fix issues with traditional PCs, only 27.8 per cent said they currently provide remote support for tablets. This figure fell to only 10.3 per cent when it came to smartphones.
The continued growth of BYOD in the enterprise was cited as one of the reasons for increased complexity when it comes to supporting remote workers.
While 52.7 per cent of respondents said they would be providing remote support for smartphones within the next 18 months, and 44.5 per cent plan to do so for tablets, the remaining 37 and 27.8 per cent have no plans to.
The use of unsecure remote access tools was meanwhile shown to be a major risk factor associated with mobile data breaches.
Approximately 36 per cent of respondents are worried about the security risks of remote support, and 31 per cent were unsure of the potential for vulnerabilities.
Stuart Facey, VP of EMEA for Bomgar, said: "Almost everybody uses computers plus mobile devices during their jobs these days.
"When I see results like only 11 or 12 per cent of companies stating they are confident in the security of their remote support tools, it tells me... there is a security gap in the service portfolio for many organisations."
Adrian Drury, practice leader for consumer impact technology at Ovum, said: "The onus is on IT to not only deliver great support to its increasingly mobile and remote workers, but to ensure that the tools being used to deliver support limit security vulnerabilities created by the mobile worker."
