Companies Still Making Little Progress On Workplace Device Management

Millions of employees worldwide are using their own devices within the workplace, but little progress has been made by major corporates to manage the security risk, says the latest Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC) Global State of Information Security Survey.

Some 9,600 senior executives representing hundreds of billions of dollars in turnover in major companies all over the world were polled in the survey and when asked what initiatives they had launched to protect against mobile security risk the answers were scarcely better than those in the previous year. And in some cases actually worse.

Only 42 per cent had a mobile security strategy, a 2 per cent improvement on the previous year.

Only 39 per cent had mobile device management software, a 1 per cent improvement on the previous year.

Authentication on devices, critical to ensure that only those authorised can access company data on their devices, was 35 per cent, an improvement of 4 per cent on the previous year.

And making the decision to ban user-owned devices for network access, which is recommended by many as the only way affectively to manage access to company data, had actually fallen. In 2012 some 33 per cent of user-owned devices we3re banned and in 2012 this had fallen to 30 per cent.

As if to emphasise their risk, when asked who were the most likely source of incidents 31 per cent of all questioned said it would be current employees.

Says PwC:" It's the people you know—current or former employees, as well as other insiders—who are most likely to perpetrate security incidents."

Bill Boyle is a communications, social media and PR specialist at WHB Communications.