Mobile technology is taking over. Research shows that 64% of American adults now own a smartphone of some kind, up from 35% in the spring of 2011. More than one in 10 African Americans (12%) and Latinos (13%) are smartphone-dependent. No wonder why about 28% of all web traffic comes from mobile users nowadays.
Mobile device usage has become so prevalent that 67% of cell owners find themselves checking their phone for messages, alerts, or calls — even when their phone didn’t ring or vibrate; 44% of cell owners sleep with their phone next to their bed because they don’t want to miss any notifications; and 29% of cell owners describe their cell phone as “something they can’t imagine living without.”
Mobile devices have even become so prevalent that the majority of organizations let employees bring their own devices (BYOD) and use them for work. A survey by Tech Pro Research found that about 74% of organizations either already use BYOD policies or plan to allow employees to bring their own devices to work.
A new study by Champion Solutions Group has found that many businesses aren’t taking the necessary safety steps to safeguard their mobile devices.
The Real-World Mobile Device Security Practices study surveyed 447 IT decision-makers and found that more than one-half of organizations don’t have a formal bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policy. More than three-quarters don’t require multi-factor authentication (having a password and a PIN, for example) on mobile devices’ applications and network resources.
“This research we conducted is very important and relevant in today’s mobile workforce,” Champion president and CEO Chris Pyle told Channeleconomics. “Our goal is to present businesses both large and small with the facts uncovered in the report to assist them with developing policies around enterprise mobility services. Many of our customers would like to know if their policies are too constraining or too loose, and this gives them the ability to compare to their peers in the same industries and size of business.”
That being said, the study wasn’t all doom-and-gloom. Champion also found that eight out of 10 organizations require lengthy, mixed alphanumeric passwords, that almost three-quarters of business don’t let employees re-use a recent password, and that one-half of businesses require password resets at least every 90 days.
However, a company — and mobile device user — can never have enough security. Research shows that a laptop is stolen every 53 seconds, that 70 million smartphones are lost each year (only seven percent of which are recovered), and that 4.3% of company-issued smartphones are lost or stolen every year.
Without proper security, companies are likely to suffer data breaches, problems that each cost on average $3.79 million.
