According to a global study companies are ill prepared to deal with data leaks from the next generation mobile workforce, with six out of ten sharing their work and personal devices with others regularly.
The study, conducted on 11,500 workers across 23 countries worldwide, found that nearly a fifth of employees don’t have passwords on devices, while about 22% said that there are no security measures to prevent them sharing data.
37% of the organisations surveyed had not implemented basic mobile security policy, while 18% of employees do not use password protection on their devices.
Aruba Networks CMO Ben Gibson said, "#GenMobile workers are flexible, transparent and collaborative, willing to take action to drive productivity and business growth.
"That said, these employees are also far more willing to share company data, and are notably oblivious towards security."
"Organisations should strive to build a secure and operational framework for all workers, rather than stifle them. These trends underline that #GenMobile employees continue to be a growing part of the everyday workforce, but they also bring with them some risky behaviors," Gibson added.
"In a contemporary connected world, firms need to nurture creativity, while at the same time minimise the risk of data and information loss.
"As a result, employers need to take an adaptive trust approach to connectivity and data security, identifying individual worker preferences that factor multiple layers of contextual information in order to build secure infrastructures around them."
When the study sought employees’ opinion on security, it came fifth terms of priority behind brand and operating systems.
Nine out of ten employees believe that their IT department will keep them protected, while 31% of them said to have lost data due to the misuse of a mobile device.
56% of such employees will even disobey their bosses to get something done, while 77% are willing to perform self-service IT.
