Check Point, one of Metadigm’s Premier Partners, released the results of a recent survey, which uncovered that nearly half of all UK public and private sector organisations are still risking data breaches, loss and potential leaks from their portable devices. A staggering 43% said they did not have encryption deployed and a further 5% admitted they did not even know if encryption was used.
This evidence shows that a huge proportion of businesses are still vulnerable to breaches from loss or theft of their devices. In addition, the survey also questioned the 130 UK IT managers and senior IT staff revealed that only half of their employees use data encryption to protect removable media such as USB memory sticks, removable drives and DVD’s.
A growing issue for businesses has become the number of employees that use smart phones or personal laptops for work purposes. The survey revealed that a staggering 42% of employees who use portable devices had no formal process for deploying security to those devices, leaving their company as a whole in jeopardy. What is even more disturbing is the realisation that only 17% of the organisations asked said they insisted on deploying security on personal devices used for work purposes. Terry Greer-King, Check Point’s UK Managing Director said:
“It’s encouraging that more UK firms are protecting their laptops and data, but the rate of growth is slow, and nearly half of organisations still do not secure data on portable computers and devices. At the same time, new threats such as consumerization and emerging, and many organisations haven’t established measures to secure the use of personal laptops and smartphones in the workplace”.
Also in the news this week Facebook has fallen victim to yet another hack, this time the culprit posting pornographic and indecent images, and is vowing to seek legal action for those responsible. The multi-billion pound company has blamed the hack on a ‘self-XSS vulnerability in the browser” that tricked users into pasting and executing malicious JavaScript in their address bars which cause them to unknowingly share this offensive content.
