The bring your own device (BYOD) to work trend is gathering speed in Ireland, with new figures showing more than one in three large Irish organisations have procedures to support employees using their own smartphones or tablets.
The finding is an interesting side note to the main results of Deloitte’s Information Security and Cybercrime Survey, which was released today. It found a huge swing towards use of mobile devices in the workplace – 87pc of respondents saying they support them when provided by the organisation, and 31pc allowing staff to bring their own devices.
Interestingly, 3pc of organisations said they have a policy of only allowing employee-purchased devices, and a further 10pc are currently piloting a programme to support this hardware.
Jared Carstensen, manager of Deloitte’s Enterprise Risk Services group, suggested the trend may be growing for cost-cutting reasons, as it saves organisations from having to buy the hardware themselves.
However, a BYOD policy also brings security risks, he added. “A number of organisations are having issues around that: who owns the device, who owns the information on it, and what actions need to happen in the event of a breach.”
The survey found 61pc of organisations implemented specialist technologies to increase mobile security, and 16pc had introduced security mechanisms that had been developed in-house, such as additional access control or security restrictions.
Some 7pc said they believe current security measures are sufficient to cover mobile devices, and 16pc have no additional systems in place to protect the information that these devices hold.
A number of vendors are looking to meet this need by providing ways to encrypt sensitive information on mobile devices, or ‘sandboxing’ them so they are stored separately to personal data, like photos taken with the phones. The list includes Good Technology and Irish company Morrigan Partners.
