Published on the 17/10/2013 | Written by Newsdesk
Lack of investment in mobility is compromising the transformational technology’s ability to deliver productivity gains and opening companies up to security threats…
The ‘Dimension Data secure enterprise mobility report’ published today has revealed that only 29 percent of those companies executing a mobility strategy have tested how well their core applications actually work on mobile devices.
The global survey was conducted across 1622 organisations of more than 250 employees in 22 countries and asked IT and security professionals to discuss their mobility plans.
The troubling results show, amongst other things, that many organisations are not dedicating the resources that are necessary to fully enable users to leverage existing business applications in ways that increase productivity. Indeed, 61 percent of those surveyed indicated that employees are unable to access core applications necessary to perform their job functions from their mobile devices and only just over 30 percent reported to have addressed troubleshooting mobility or conducted security audits of applications touched by mobile devices. It would appear then, that despite its pervasive nature (79 percent said mobility for business is a top priority) support resources for mobility are an after-thought for many organisations.
“This figure is startling, given the ubiquity of mobile devices being used by employees for work today.” says Matthew Gyde, Dimension Data’s global general manager, Security Solutions. “Without taking these steps, IT departments could be at risk of delivering sub-optimal user experiences that will inhibit adoption – and as importantly, they’ll miss out on the chance to proactively identify and solve security challenges before they become threats.”
Moreover, an alarming 90 percent of survey participants said that they could not stop employees using their personal mobile devices to access enterprise systems even if they wanted to and 73 percent did not feel that their organisations have well-defined policies around mobility.
With the vast majority of respondents saying that their organisations’ employees are using personal devices and applications for work, these results suggest that IT leaders are struggling to solve the security problems stemming from supporting BYOD (bring your own device) and enterprise mobility amid an explosion of personal devices and applications accessing the network.
This underinvestment in a holistic approach to mobility could mean that mobility does not deliver on its productivity promises and could even lead to severe data security ramifications. Although Gyde says it is entirely possible to realise productivity benefits without compromising security the survey results show that security fears may be hindering productivity benefits.
“Mobility is particularly complex and touches most parts of an organisation’s network infrastructure. This means that organisations must take into account numerous facets of the business. This includes security policy, risk assessment, costs of operational support, and the effects on application service delivery and employee productivity. Ultimately the business case must establish a balance that maximises the utility of a company’s resources for each of the stakeholders involved.”
Click here to read Dimension Data’s full Secure Enterprise Mobility Report.
