Acronis and the Ponemon Institute have published the results of a joint survey that suggests most businesses are putting their data at risk because they don’t have the correct policies in place.
Most common was a lack of personal device policies – and even among those that did have these policies, executives were exempted, despite the fact they could be handling the most sensitive company data.
A quarter of those surveyed are, the report says, in “denial” about BYOD trends. 23 percent still forbid personal devices from being on the network.
Alarmingly, almost 80 percent of surveyed organisations haven’t bothered to educate their employees on BYOD privacy risks let alone best practice.
Just 18 percent performed remote device wipes when employees moved on from the company. Similarly, 21 percent required a device password or key lock on these devices.
Businesses are also using public cloud services like Dropbox to store and share corporate data, and many don’t have policies in place for public cloud either. Most of the surveyed companies hadn’t trained employees how to properly use public cloud services.
Acronis’ MD for UK&I, Rick Powles, said that while the BYOD trend is an opportunity for companies, many are negligent. “With policies that manage the flow of data between multiple devices and environments, companies can practice safe BYOD with confidence,” Powles said.
Over 4,000 IT managers were surveyed around the world.
