36% of U.S. BYOD Workers Would Not Report Data Leaks Right Away—Research Says
36% of U.S. BYOD Workers Would Not Report Data Leaks Right Away—Research Says by UCStrategies Staff
Enterprise mobility and remote networking solutions provider Aruba Networks, Inc. announced the results of the study it conducted on more than 3,000 employees around the world. The study revealed many significant BYOD-related findings for businesses.
According to the results of the Aruba Networks study, 11 percent of workers in the USA, 13 percent in Europe, and 26 percent in the Middle East would not tell their employers that their personal devices were compromised, even when company data had been leaked. In addition, 36 percent of U.S. workers polled, 40 percent in Europe, and 41 percent in the Middle East would not report leaked company data right away.
Entitled Employees Tell the Truth About Your Company’s Data, the report also showed that 66 percent of polled American workers, 45 percent of European workers, and 40 percent of Middle Eastern workers feared the loss of their personal data.
These concerns felt by many employees around the world result in their keeping the IT department away from their BYOD devices. Also noteworthy is the finding that 17 percent of American workers would not tell their employers about using their personal devices for work.
And when it came to IT-initiated safeguarding (or the lack thereof), 51 percent of American employees, 34 percent of Europeans, and 35 percent of Middle Easterners said that their IT department did not undertake steps to secure applications and corporate files in their personal devices.
The report indicates that the apparent caginess of workers is fueled by their negative perception of their respective IT departments, most especially by what they believed the IT team would do to their personal devices and data. Forty-five percent of polled workers in the USA, 25 percent in Europe, and 31 percent in the Middle East are worried about the access of IT department to their personal data.
“The research from both sides of the Atlantic shows that employees and IT departments are gambling with data security, but chance isn’t the only factor,” said Ben Gibson, chief marketing officer of Aruba Networks, in a prepared statement. “In short, employees resent the power their employers now wield over their personal data, but are equally unconcerned about keeping company data safe.”
Gibson explained, “We are now well beyond the point of discussing Bring Your Own Device as something on the horizon. It is a reality across the world and businesses need to adopt solutions that give their employees greater privacy for their personal data as well as exert greater network controls to ensure that sensitive information is not leaked, without disrupting the user experience.”
The report also uncovered that 31 percent of the American respondents distrusted the security software installed by their IT departments on their personal devices.
Aruba Networks’ senior director Chris Kozup explained, “The reason they don't trust IT is because they believe this potentially is way for IT to have visibility into their personal information.” However, BYOD is a reality for many business organizations. So Kozup said that “we have to look at methods for co-existence between personal and professional data. The challenge is to make sure that the enterprise can control the privacy and security of corporate data in the world of BYOD without touching the personal data on a device.”
Thus, many businesses have mobile device management systems (MDMs), which control, by way of policies, what devices can do every time they connect to a network. MDMs also enable network administrators to perform tasks, such as remotely wipe a phone in case it gets stolen or misplaced.
Meanwhile, Aruba offers a way for businesses to manage the use of personal devices in the workplace. The Aruba Workspace mobile application creates an encrypted area and specifies the space on the personal device intended only for work applications and files. This allows IT departments to gain full control over the corporate information stored in the encrypted space while lacking visibility into the personal data of employees. (KOM) Link. Link.