NEW YORK, NY – Despite extensive resources dedicated to mobile security, many IT decision-makers remain concerned about the level of vulnerabilities that persist, according to global research conducted by BlackBerry.
Presented Tuesday at the BlackBerry Security Summit in New York, the study surveyed 1,000 executives from the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, India, Singapore and Australia from vertical industries including financial services, government and healthcare.
It found that while 73% of organizations have a mobile security strategy in place, only 3% say that they have implemented the highest levels of security possible. This is in part because of user attitudes – 82% of the executives admit mobile security precautions cause at least some frustration among employees, and potentially hinder productivity. Overall, 44% fear that too much mobile security will prevent employees from doing their job.
This fear of implementing a stronger mobile environment led to a startling majority (86%) of respondents who said they are worried about the level of protection for their organization, with half saying they will experience more security breaches through mobile devices, due in part to the growing BYOD trend. According to BlackBerry, a critical element to a successful BYOD or COPE (corporate owned, personally enabled) mobile environment is ensuring the isolation and separation of personal and business mobile data, also known as containerization. However, nearly 45% of respondents say they have no containerization technology in place.
"The frequency and severity of malicious attacks have made mobile security the center of attention for CEOs and boards of directors, but doing enough to mitigate risk is still a persistent problem that needs to be solved. This is especially true as the constant adoption of new technologies regularly brings the potential for new vulnerabilities, which can offset the benefits," said BlackBerry’s chief security officer David Kleidermacher, in the news release. "We have also heard many of our customers say that security policies can be perceived as a hindrance. However, senior executives in every function, and even in the boardroom, need to forcefully communicate that effective mobile security enhances productivity instead of obstructing it."
BlackBerry also issued a series of announcements from the event, including a multi-million dollar order from the U.S. Senate Sergeant at Arms Office for the BlackBerry AtHoc crisis communications software to power the Sergeant at Arms' Joint Emergency Mass Notification Systems over five years. The company also unveiled an expanded relationship with the U.S. Coast Guard to extend its Alert Warning System 2.0 to include alerting for staff members in the National Capitol Region, and said that the U.S. Department of Defense had given its approval to BlackBerry’s smartphone software and mobile management system.
The Waterloo-based company also announced a partnership with mobile app integration services company AppDome for its AppFusion service for customers to easily integrate, use, protect and manage their enterprise apps on its Good Dynamics, and that Turkey has selected its QNX Neutrino Realtime OS as the software platform for its new electric locomotives under development.
