Personal Smartphones and Enterprise Data: Risky Combination
The more security conscious among us wouldn't use a home PC to access sensitive corporate data but using a smartphone is another story. It's part balancing risk and benefit and part pragmatic acceptance of the way business is done these days.
A new survey by sponsored by GuardianEdge covered by SearchSecurity found 70% of respondents accessing what they consider sensitive data on their smartphones. A full 82% are willing to have corporate security software deployed on thier smartphones, including their personal ones and 75% would feel better if they had encryption on their devices.
This shows (1) corporate users of mobile devices are well aware of security issues and (2) many are willing to cede some control over their devices to improve security. The next question is where do you draw the line between corporate and private control? Should the company be able to use data loss protection software on the device to scan for confidential information? How about access to calling history, the equivalent of log files?
We are stepping into a gray area of semi-managed or co-managed devices. For more on how to develop policies to manage these issues, check out the recent podcast on mobile device security policies.
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