SOTI Research: Employees Continue To Be The Biggest Threat To Corporate Data

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

A survey from SOTI illustrates the conflict between solutions providers’ best intentions and how employees use their mobile devices — and how this conflict jeopardizes corporate and personal data. According to the study, employees continue to be the biggest risk to corporate data, and their actions often jeopardize the enterprise. 

According to an infographic based on the study, the top five mobile security threats are accidental data exposure (30 percent); phishing (27 percent); outside hackers (27 percent); corporate espionage (26 percent); and man-in-the-middle attacks (21 percent).

The study found almost 68 percent of respondents have a company-issued mobile device, but 78 percent of those employees still use their personal devices to access company data. Also, 67 percent of IT professionals cite device theft as a top concern, but the level of this concern doesn’t correspond to the statistic that less than 7 percent of consumers have lost a device. In addition, the study found 70 percent use corporate-issued devices to access public Wi-Fi and 64 percent use consumer cloud storage for work files. Another 61 percent forwarded a work document to a personal email address, while 60 percent have taken a photo of collaborative work. 

Without an appropriate mobile strategy in place, these actions will continue to place the enterprise at risk. And only 47 percent of those polled said that their enterprise currently has a mobile strategy.

“Being able to see the disconnect between what users really do and what their IT departments hope for shines a bright light on how both groups can protect themselves from their respective blind spots,” SOTI CEO Carl Rodrigues comments on the SOTI blog.