Adding security to your environment in order to preemptively combat threats is a sound practice, especially when your environment now includes employees and customers accessing critical company information on their mobile devices (BYOD). For busy decision makers with long backlogs, it can be a challenge to quantify the importance of enhancing security before it costs their organizations money and forces them to react.
CheckPoint Technologies has published a mobile security report that brings some of these numbers into focus. An introduction and summary of the report here describes key finding which include:
- Surge in Personal Mobile Devices Connecting to the Corporate Network – Among companies that allow personal mobile devices, 96 percent say the number of personal devices connecting to their corporate networks is growing, and 45 percent have more than five times as many personal mobile devices as they had two years ago.
- Mobile Security Incidents Common and Costly for Businesses Large and Small – More than half (52%) of large businesses report mobile security incidents have amounted to more than $500,000 in the past year. Even for 45 percent of SMBs with less than 1000 employees, mobile security incidents exceeded $100,000 in the past year.
- Mobile Platform with the Greatest Perceived Security Risks - Android was cited by 49 percent of businesses as the platform with greatest perceived security risk (up from 30 percent last year), compared to Apple, Windows Mobile, and Blackberry
- Corporate Information Not Managed on Mobile Devices – Despite costly mobile incidents, 63 percent of businesses do not manage corporate information on personal devices, and 93 percent face challenges adopting BYOD policies.
- More Mobile Devices Store Sensitive Customer Information - More than half (53%) of all businesses surveyed report there is sensitive customer information on mobile devices, up from 47 percent last year.