IT professionals still not protecting mobile devices

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Even security-mindful professionals leave data on unencrypted mobile devices, like laptops, USB drives or CD/DVDs, according to research released today.

The report, sponsored by Credant Technologies, a data protection and management group, said 52 per cent of the nearly 300 IT security professionals surveyed do not encrypt the data on USB drives they use to carry company data.

“If over half of this IT savvy audience are carrying unprotected sensitive information on USB sticks … it makes me question just how big this problem is and, more importantly, what needs to happen to make organisations wake up to the risk," Sean Glynn, vice president and chief marketing officer of Credant Technologies, said in a statement.

Of the report’s respondents, 11 per cent protect their devices with passwords, which is a process known to be easily breached, the report said.

Organisations can use data-centered, policy-based protection, which won’t allow information to be transferred without first encrypting it- no matter what device it’s being transferred to, the report said.

The type of unprotected data reported by respondents was not insignificant, with 67 percent intellectual property, 40 per cent customer data and 26 per cent employee details.

Incidents of lost or stolen devices were also mentioned in the study, which said that 11 per cent of the sample had experienced a breach recently.

“We’ll continue to work with organisations’ to deliver flexible solutions that track and report on where sensitive data is moving, and provide the right blend of data encryption and protection technologies to mitigate these risks.” Glynn added.

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