Cybersecurity risks stated biggest barrier to BYOD and enterprise mobility

One in five organisations suffered a mobile security breach; threats are on the rise and impose heavy burden on IT and helpdesk staff.

Following industry predictions that the global BYOD and enterprise mobility market will reach $360 billion by 2020, Crowd Research Partners have released the results of its new 2016 BYOD and Mobile Security Report, in conjunction with leading data security vendors Blancco Technology Group, Bitglass, Check Point Software Technologies, Skycure, SnoopWall and Tenable Network Security.

Based on a survey of over 800 global cybersecurity professionals who are members of the 300,000 member Information Security Community on LinkedIn, the study provides a conflicting portrayal of BYOD security barriers and adoption trends in the workplace.

“Increased productivity and employee satisfaction continue to drive adoption of BYOD and enterprise mobility”, said Holger Schulze, founder of the 300,000 member Information Security Community on LinkedIn.

“The 2016 BYOD and Mobile Security report reveals that enterprise security risks and mobile data breaches are on the rise. While these threats can significantly impact the success of BYOD initiatives and place a burden on IT support staff, this is also an opportunity for organisations to implement effective cybersecurity solutions to strengthen their security posture and capitalise on the promise of enterprise mobility.”

Key BYOD and mobile security trends that surfaced from the study include:

• Security (39 percent) and employee privacy (12 percent) are the biggest inhibitors of BYOD adoption. In contrast, management opposition (3 percent) and user experience concerns (4 percent) rank far lower.
• One in five organisations suffered a mobile security breach, primarily driven by malware and malicious WiFi.
• Security threats to BYOD impose heavy burdens on organisations’ IT resources (35 percent) and help desk workloads (27 percent).
• Despite increasing mobile security threats, data breaches and new regulations, only 30 percent of organisations are increasing security budgets for BYOD in the next 12 months. Meanwhile, 37 percent have no plans to change their security budgets.

Pat Clawson, CEO, Blancco Technology Group, said:

“BYOD can be a tough nut for organisations to crack,” said Pat Clawson, CEO of Blancco Technology Group.

“Despite its many benefits, our study found that 21 percent of organisations have experienced a data breach resulting from BYOD or corporate-owned mobile devices. This often creates a chicken-or-egg scenario – where organisations contemplate whether to push forward with BYOD without having complete security controls in place, or to postpone until they can be absolutely certain data won’t be leaked.

To change this, we need to educate businesses on the full scope of mobile security risks and technology solutions that can help them protect data across the entire lifecycle – and get the C-suite to understand the impact on overall business growth.”

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