Mobile opens businesses to new risks

The ubiquitous adoption of smartphones among Australian workers has created new threat vectors for businesses, research from Zscaler shows.

A survey of CIOs at last month’s AusCERT conference shows that more than 70% of organisations have at least a quarter of their employees accessing enterprise applications from mobile devices.

One in three respondents indicated that they had seen the number of mobile device users across their organisation increase by 25–50% over the last 12 months.

The majority (60%) of mobile device users are using their devices to access business applications more than 25% of the time.

Zscaler VP for APAC and Japan Scott Robertson said the results of the survey demonstrate the widespread upheaval taking place in the world of IT security.

“Mobile devices, and the advantages they offer, have changed the way business is conducted. However, smartphones and tablets have also have wrought a new class of security threats and attack vectors,” he said.

“The varied mobile platforms and devices, along with the exponential growth of mobile apps, can quickly become a security and compliance nightmare for enterprises to manage.”

He said new and more effective security measures will be required to ensure true mobile security. Attempts to address this such as mobile device management (MDM) have proven inadequate, Robertson said.

The survey also shows that while 84% of Australian organisations have previously deployed a virtual private network (VPN) to allow secure access to network and business applications, one in four report that at least half their workforce is accessing content from the internet rather than a VPN.

More than half (54%) of CSOs have up to 25% of their business applications in the cloud, and one in four plan to have more than half their applications in the cloud within the next 12 months.

“This survey data suggests that in today’s enterprise everywhere business, users can instantly download unvetted apps from the cloud, opening them up to a variety of brand new threat vectors,” Robertson said.

“The issue puts IT in the awkward position of balancing personal privacy with corporate security across platforms that you not only don’t own, but may not even be aware of.”

Image courtesy of Faris Algosaibi under CC