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Security: Executives Wake Up to the Risks
A wave of new devices and technology is making the job of enforcing data security a very difficult one. Increasingly employees are using their personal devices, especially smartphones and tablets for accessing data from their organization. This trend is being called the “Consumerization of IT“. IDC and Unisys report that an astonishingly high 95 percent of people have purchased a personal technology device that they have also used for their work. Interestingly, only half of employers say that access to corporate data using a personal device is OK.
Spencer Parker, group product manager at Websense, a data security company, commented that company IT departments are “losing access to their data because they’re putting it onto a device they no longer own or control… It’s not just phones any more – it’s smart devices like iPads. The proliferation of those devices has just gone ballistic.”
The IDC report found a major disconnect between how employers think their employees are accessing data in the workplace and the reality. The report found that smartphones and tablets are used to access corporate data nearly twice as frequently compared to the estimate of their employers. And even while company policy may frown on it, employees are generally dissatisfied with the level of support that corporate IT provides to them for using their personal devices.
InformationWeek’s Kurt Marko reports that 70 percent of executives are now realizing that personal devices used for work purposes represents a strong security risk. 20 percent say that these devices aren’t a problem for them just yet but potentially will become a problem in the very near term. And the remaining 10 percent of executives haven’t yet realized the problem.
Company executives are becoming more aware of the potential risks that new technologies are introducing. In 2010, 27 percent of CEO’s and presidents were involved in the creation of security policies for their businesses. In 2011, that number increased to 34 percent. Awareness of security at the top is a good thing, hopefully this is a number that will continue to grow.
