Over half of the UK’s business IT networks (51 percent) were breached during 2012 due to employees using their personal devices at work, according to research carried out by Virgin Media Business. Over 500 British CIOs were questioned on the pitfalls of the consumerisation of IT and bring your own device (BYOD) schemes for the survey.
The survey also revealed that networks were more likely to be compromised in larger organisations with SMEs experiencing 25 percent fewer security breaches. This may give the perception that only large corporations are potential targets for attacks however the reality is that attacks and breaches are increasingly targeting small and medium sized business knowing that oftentimes they do not have the resources or technical knowledge that large corporations do.
At SpamTitan we see countless scenarios where small businesses come to us as a result of falling victim to threats similar to those suffered by high profile companys. Any medium sized company that relies heavily on email and the internet to conduct business requires the appropriate network security protection. Over 400,000 complaints were filed with the Internet crime complaint centre in 2011, a partnership between the National White Collar Crime Center and the FBI. These complaints came from small and medium sized businesses affected by online breachs, phishing scams and other Internet related crimes.
Gartner recently called for increased flexibility and adaptability among CIOs who are already struggling to cope with the use of personal devices in the workplace. There’s a lot of mixed feelings among SMEs around the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend, which represents massive change in attitude and policy for most small and medium sized companys.
Clearly security concerns are affecting many companys technology adoption plans, including any plans around allowing employees use personal devices at work. CTOs and IT departments have a lot to consider , procuring and deploying technology is just the start, organizations have to ensure that the use of their systems across all devices is secure and ultimately benefits the business.
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