July 15, 2015
According to research conducted by Arlington Research on behalf of Acronis, as many as 40% of UK organizations have no security policies in place to prevent employees from accessing or sharing sensitive data, which is a problem given the 60% who also report using personal devices at work.
The survey, of 1,016 senior UK business leaders, revealed that 40% of respondents admit to having no policy in place to specify how employees use their personal devices at work. One in five employees (20%) admit to losing a personal device that contained corporate data on it.
While BYOD is not necessarily the “bad guy” here, clearly organizations are not keeping pace with the data security requirements that go along with mobility. Whether officially sanctioned or not, employees are using their personal devices and are finding a way to access corporate data. It only takes one missing device, one use of insecure WiFi, one compromised password, one click of a phishing email (and so forth) to compromise the entire corporate network.
We share some of our thoughts on employees and data security in Defending Corporate Data in Spite of Employees as well as our whitepaper, ‘The Enemy Within - Insiders are still the weakest link in your data security chain.’
Through training and policy, employees need to be made aware of their role in protecting corporate data. Technology and process can help protect corporate data from being used on non-approved devices and can help enforce stronger security practices on approved devices. Our BYOD Policy Implementation Guide can walk you through everything you need to know to legally secure and manage employee-owned devices.
Absolute Software can help you gain visibility into each area of data protection - authentication, authorization, audit and administration - and can help you ensure that governance, risk management and compliance measures are in place. The unique Persistence technology offers an important layer to any data security strategy and helps mitigate the risk of human error, rogue employees, and cybercrime. Absolute Software can help organizations plug the security holes created by mobility and human error. Learn more at Absolute.com
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