Dubai
Companies encouraging employees to bring their own mobile devices to work are finding it increasingly challenging to plug data leaks, one of the world’s largest digital security firms has said.
“Most of our customers that we spend time with say that is one of the biggest challenges they have is that there is no solution out there today, so we’re working to deliver that,” said Travis Grandpre, Director of Product Marketing for Mobile Solution, Symantec.
By bringing their own mobile device to work, an employee can store commercially sensitive information on a device that can be unprotected inside and out of the workspace.
The concept of providing a secure workspace and secure mobile experience is becoming more important to companies because the end users behaviour is fairly careless, said Grandpre.
Grandpre spoke to the media in Dubai on Wednesday alongside other Symantec executives following the announcement of a new security management product.
Highlighting the urgency to plug the market gap for mobile data protection, Grandpre said that despite the demand for mobile security, customers are prioritising productivity improvements over their security strategies.
“Most of our customers are telling us they have got to solve productivity problems more than anything and what we’re hearing from our analysts is the idea of security is behind productivity with most organisations,” he said.
Despite it being a major concern for companies it might take a take a damaging mobile data leak for them to become more proactive in stretching budgets to address the matter.
“Security ... is probably a side of mobile we are still yet to see massive events happen that will cause enterprises to be really concerned about it,” said Grandpre.
The United Arab Emirates has the highest smartphone penetration, 73.9 per cent, according to Google’s 2013 Our Mobile Planet study, meaning that nearly three out of four people in the UAE own a smartphone.