About nine in ten major European firms have experienced or anticipated some form of security issues in the past two years due to the rise in common use of own devices such as including smartphones, tablets and laptops, by their staff, a new report revealed.
Samsung’s latest report revealed that about a third of major European firms had reportedly lost consumer data and disclosed secret information owing to security breaches mainly due to the usage of personal mobile devices during work.
The bring your own device (BYOD) policy, which has been adopted by over half of European organisations, has turned into a commonplace in several firms, allowing their staff to use their personal smartphones and tablets on the company network.
Samsung Europe business to business division vice-president Andrew Mills was cited by the Financial Times as saying that organisations have a huge amount to gain with employees using their own mobile devices for work.
"But our analysis also highlights the dangerous threat to corporate stability that BYOD poses and the worrying lack of priority being given to this issue by many," Mills said.
The cost-effective IT policy has also exposed the prospect of new breaches of data security, including theft of device containing unencrypted information to more sophisticated hacking and malware attacks that can move towards the company’s network route.
The report also presses that majority of companies rarely had an idea of the type of data stored on devices, while most of them had no idea of wiping them remotely.
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About 70% of organisations in Spain revealed much concern about security due to use of mobile devices at work, with information executives in financial services being the most concerned.
The survey also found that the implementation of BYOD policy offered benefits, with businesses adopting the policy had saved about 17% on average of their communications bill per year, with over a third of firms reported that it enhanced employee productivity.
