Companies who are willing to compromise on mobile security are found to be falling vulnerable to cyber risks such as data loss, downtime and reputational damage and customer relationship.
This was revealed in a Mobile Security Index survey conducted by Verizon where over 48% of respondents agreed to have sacrificed mobile security in the past year to “get the job done”.
The study found that all those who have sacrificed security were nearly twice as likely to suffer a compromise and a majority of those already affected admitted that they had fallen prey to a major cyber attack for showing laxity towards mobile security.
Verizon’s Mobile Security Index survey shows that almost all the financial services companies who participated in the survey – around 93%- saw mobile as the fastest growing source of the threat.
And those from the professional business sector and educational sector were seen somewhat less fretful at 82% and 78%, respectively.
Researchers who conducted the Verizon survey say that companies are giving priority to speed and profits over security and so are failing to nip the threats in time. The study also found that most organizations lack important mobile security tools like anti-virus and anti-malware solutions in place.
“It can be due to overconfidence or budget crisis, no business seems to be taking mobile security on a serious note”, the report wrote.
One statistics say that on average, employees are found using 12 Wi-Fi hotspots each day. And the survey found that over 14% of devices connected to malware-driven hotspots each month which Verizon called as “Rogue access Points” that imitate real public Wi-Fi.
“There is a need for us to immediately acknowledge that we now live in a mobile world where employees are interested in visiting Starbucks more often than their company office space”, said Justin Blair, Executive director of Business Products, Verizon.
Justin, however, is not discouraging corporate employees from connecting to networks while on go. Instead, he advises them to use LTE in place of Wi-Fi to get the things done and urges everyone to use some sort of protection on their devices like application help to secure the devices from sensitized networks.
