Mobile devices of employees constitute a threat to the security of corporate data.
The workers' mobile phones have become a source of many data leaks. Yet businesses often lag behind in securing mobile phones. Only 36 percent of respondents in the survey resaearching the 'Economic Risk of Confidential Data on Mobile Devices in the Workplace' indicates that they actively try to protect their organisation's sensitive or confidential information on mobile phones of employees. Also, most companies have no guidelines for employee access to company information.
This is simply because many companies are not aware of the risks that mobile phones in the workplace entail. 74 percent of respondents indicated that the ability to gain access to sensitive or confidential business information via mobile phones in the past two years has grown rapidly. Yet they do little to protect this information.
'Hazard' for business
The most common attacks that occur against companies are from malware on phones (software that might disrupt computer systems) and theft of login. If employees download apps for business and private use, these apps may contain malware, and could remain unnoticed for months or even years. In the meantime, this malware can disrupt business, cause IT failures, and access sensitive or confidential data.
Cost of malware infection
It is, of course, difficult to say what a phone infected by malware exactly costs, but research can help provide us with an average: Malware on a mobile device from an employee costs a company an average of 9,485 dollars. If the hackers can actually find sensitive or confidential data, then the cost could rise to an average of 21,042 dollars per phone. The charges that are included herein are the cost of the help desk, the loss of productivity, and the value of the data.