Secutiry concerns are the biggest obstacle to the widespread adoption of wireless and remote computing in businesses worldwide today, according to a global survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit and sponsored by Symantec Corp.
More than 60 percent of companies are holding back on deployment, citing security concerns, while almost one in five businesses has already experienced financial loss due to attacks via mobile data platforms.
The research highlights serious weaknesses in present security arrangements for mobile devices. While 82 percent of businesses worldwide indicate that they see the damage from virus attacks as the same or greater on a mobile network than on a fixed network, only 26 percent have actually assessed security risks of smart phones, compared with 81 percent of enterprises conducting security assessments for laptops.
Despite the proliferation of mobile-device use in the enterprise, only 9 percent of companies have incorporated a comprehensive security architecture designed to include mobile-device access. Of the rest, 10 percent of companies have no measures for addressing mobile security, 39 percent are granting mobile devices access to corporate networks on an ad hoc basis, and another 39 percent are integrating mobile devices into their existing fixed network security architecture.
“In today’s enterprise, there are multiple end points to account for, and proper protection cannot be tackled as one-size-fits-all.” said Paul Miller, director mobile and wireless solutions, Symantec. “While most enterprises are aware of the risks introduced with mobility, they continue to lack the appropriate security measures and policies required to protect themselves from potential threats.”