BYO devices cause CIOs to see red

More than three-quarters of chief information officers have said their employees' mobile devices are creating security headaches.

A survey of 300 US and British chief information officers by mobile device management vendor Mformation found 76 percent were concerned about personal devices accessing the network and 78 percent do not know what devices are connected to their networks.

A third said they are not able to track data on devices they issue to workers. And if a device was lost or stolen, only 56 percent were able to secure them.

Todd DeLaughter, CEO of Mformation, said there is a "perfect storm growing" and CIOs are concerned on the size of the risk.

“There is a fear of corporate sensitive data getting out and what was amazing to me was the lack of maturity for management of devices, as three-quarters have no idea what is going on," said DeLaughter whose business relies on selling such technologies.

"I was amazed as it showed a lack of maturity of deployed solutions for managing mobile devices and that is where there is a large disconnect.

“The smartphone is used for content consumption but the tablet used for content creation and there is a higher security risk in the enterprise where there is corporate data and security concerns.

"It has taken a while to realise the value of the content of the hardware and also how you manage devices from a total cost of ownership and data security perspective. It is a wide open space that we are trying to manage.”

The survey also asked about the impact of the WikiLeaks incident and what threat that posed, 67 per cent said that this made them more concerned. DeLaughter claimed that this incident proved to be a wake up call for CIOs and CEOs as they were forced to think "what if it was me, what can I do to stop it happening to me".

This article originally appeared at scmagazineuk.com