According to the results of the Global Corporate IT Security Risks 2013 survey, conducted by B2B International in collaboration with Kaspersky Lab, it has been revealed that most companies see the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend, where employees use their personal mobile devices for work purposes, as a growing threat to business. But still the percentage of companies taking measures to minimize this threat is relatively small. This survey involved 2,895 interviews with representatives of companies in 24 countries.
93-per cent respondents of the survey in Japan agreed that BYOD is a threat to their businesses. Companies in North America (69%) also voiced a high level of concern, as did those in the Middle East (65%) and Western Europe (62%). Russian companies were the least concerned, with 57% of the participants acknowledging any threat posed by a BYOD policy.
At the same time, most companies do not plan to introduce any prohibitive measures against the use of personal devices at the workplace. On the contrary, about 31% of the respondents said they plan to encourage the use of personal smartphones and tablets at work, while another 34% said they did not believe that prohibitive measures would prevent employees from using their own devices.
Nearly 18% (2% more than in 2012) of the respondents said their companies had suffered confidential data leaks through mobile email clients, text messaging, and other channels available to smartphone and tablet owners.
But comparatively few companies said that they are adopting specialized software products to protect themselves against such threats. Around 40% of companies are using antivirus solutions to integrate, protect and manage mobile devices on the corporate network, and only 24% (2% fewer than in 2012) use Mobile Device Management solutions.
