KUCHING: Aruba Networks Inc (Aruba) is calling for businesses worldwide to take action as a new mobile security risk report reveals that businesses are ill prepared for the high-risk, high-growth mindset of the workforce, creating alarming disparity around security practices in the corporate world.
The chasm that is exposed between age, gender, income level, industry and geographic location has a direct effect on the security of corporate data.
The ‘Securing #GenMobile: Is Your Business Running the Risk’ security threat study, which questioned over 11,500 workers from across 23 countries including Malaysia, showcases that employee attitudes are swaying towards more sharing of devices yet an indifferent view to security in the workplace.
The study showed that the younger males especially those in the high tech and finance industries in Malaysia pose the greatest risk to enterprise data
security. Aruba noted that mobile security ranks third among respondents in Malaysia for device purchase decision making.
“A high 82 per cent of respondents here believe IT departments will keep them protected. 40 per cent in Malaysia admit to having lost data due to misuse of mobile device,” it reported.
“#GenMobile (Mobile generation) workers are flexible, transparent and collaborative, willing to take action to drive productivity and business growth. That said, these employees are also far more willing to share company data, and are notably oblivious towards security,” said Beverly Lu, senior director of Marketing, Asia Pacific Japan, Aruba Networks.
However, as this high-risk culture enters the enterprise, the report finds an alarming level of disparity among industries.
“In Malaysia, a high 39 per cent of the workers in the finance industry report loss of personal data and 23 per cent admit to identify theft. It is the hospitality sector (excluding education) that is least likely to report lost or stolen data in Malaysia,” it said.
Aruba said, if businesses strategically measure and intelligently manage their security, the more flexible, open methods of working and information exchange that #GenMobile workers bring can drive new business innovation.
“Organisations should strive to build a secure and operational framework for all workers, rather than stifle them. These trends underline that #GenMobile employees continue to be a growing part of the everyday workforce, but they also bring with them some risky behaviors,” said Lu.
“In a contemporary connected world, firms need to nurture creativity, while at the same time minimize the risk of data and information loss.
“As a result, employers need to take an adaptive trust approach to connectivity and data security, identifying individual worker preferences that factor multiple layers of contextual information in order to build secure infrastructures around them.”