The vast majority of IT security professional view mobile devices as the biggest security threat in the upcoming year, according to a report published by the Ponemon Institute and Lumension.
The report, entitled “2014 State of Endpoint Risk,” indicated that 75 percent of respondents said mobile devices, such as smartphones, represented the greatest risk of potential security within the IT environment.
The survey, which included 676 IT and security professionals, stated that mobile endpoints were vulnerable to malware attacks, with 68% saying their mobile endpoints had been the target of malware in the last 12 months.
“Endpoint security risk is more difficult to manage than ever. The reason is the growing number of employees and other insiders using multiple mobile devices in the workplace followed by the increase in personal devices connected to the network and the growing popularity of public cloud services such as Dropbox,” the authors said.
When asked what plan their organizations had to secure employee-owned devices, 43% said they intended to use existing security plans, while 11% said that they had stricter security standards for BYOD (bring your own device) than for corporate-owned devices.
Of those who said their organizations had a BYOD security plan, 54% said they were relying on voluntarily installing an endpoint protection agent. Other steps included mandatory enrollment in company Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions through technological means (35%) and a mandatory endpoint protection agent on laptops through technological means (32%).