PDA security still dismal
By John Leyden
Published Wednesday 1st September 2004 08:06 GMT
Worker apathy about PDA security is putting corporate data in
jeopardy. The storage of the names and addresses of corporate
customers on PDAs is now common - but security practices are
struggling to keep up with technology usage. Two thirds of users do
not use any kind of encryption to protect confidential data on mobile
devices, according to a survey commissioned by Pointsec Mobile
Technologies and Infosecurity Europe.
The Mobile Vulnerability Survey 2004 found that a third of users do
not even use password protection on their devices, leaving the
information vulnerable to opportunists, hackers or competitors.
Security awareness remains as low as that recorded by Pointsec in a
similar study last year. Since then, the diversity of applications
run on PDAs has blossomed, making them an even more attractive target
for would-be data thieves. PDAs are now firmly entrenched as
corporate communication tools, with almost half being used to receive
and view corporate emails, and a third now doubling as a phone. Three
in ten are used to store corporate information.
The survey findings show that one of the fastest and easiest ways to
access corporate data is through unprotected PDAs that are lost or
stolen, as they contain business names and addresses, spreadsheets
and other corporate documents. As well as using their PDAs to store
company information, many users store valuable personal information
such as PIN numbers, bank account details, social security numbers
and even lists of passwords, many of which can be accessed -
ironically - without a password.
One in eight (13 per cent) of respondents to the survey have lost
their mobile device, possibly in a taxi (30 per cent), or a car (20
per cent), or home (20 per cent), at an airport (10 per cent) or in a
restaurant (10 per cent).
More companies than ever have introduced a specific mobile security
policy - over 50 per cent have a policy, compared with 27 per cent
last year. But very little has changed in practice. For three years
in a row, the number of people who are encrypting their data or using
passwords to secure their PDAs has remained roughly static, in spite
of the efforts of companies in introducing mobile security policies.
The survey was conducted among 68 IT managers, with 38 per cent
coming from companies employing over 1,000 employees. ®
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* Origin: [adminz] tech, security, support (192.168.0.2)
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