Survey Shows Majority of Companies Are Vulnerable to BYOD Risks

A new survey from Acronis® and the Ponemon Institute reveals that a majority of companies are putting critical data at risk by not having secure bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies in place. By ignoring simple security steps and employee BYOD education, companies are jeopardizing their confidential data, exposing it to theft, corruption, hackers, malware and more.

Acronis’ 2013 Data Protection Trends Research, which evaluated responses from more than 4,300 IT professionals in eight countries, discovered the following.

Click through for results from a data protection survey conducted by Acronis and the Ponemon Institute.

Almost 60 percent have no personal device policy in place, and, among those with policies, 24 percent make exceptions for executives, who may handle even more sensitive data. As a result, these organizations are increasingly vulnerable to data loss and serious compliance issues.

A number of organizations are still in denial when it comes to BYOD trends, as more than 30 percent surveyed actually forbid personal devices from accessing the network.

Nearly 80 percent of organizations haven’t educated employees on BYOD privacy risks.

Just 31 percent of companies mandate a device password or key lock on personal devices, and only 21 percent perform remote device wipes when employees leave the company, drastically increasing the risk for data leakage.

Corporate files are commonly shared through third-party cloud storage solutions such as DropBox, but 67 percent of organizations don’t have a policy in place around public clouds and 80 percent haven’t trained employees in the proper use of these platforms.

While 65 percent of organizations will support Macs® in the next year, more than half (57 percent) say compatibility and interoperability are still big obstacles to getting Macs compliant with IT, which puts data stored and shared across the corporate network and on Apple devices at risk.