Australian Corporate Data Under Serious Threat
Australian Corporate Data Under Serious Threat
June 1, 2006: Centennial’s survey has revealed that the daily threat posed by removable devices to corporate data in Australia is alarmingly high.
In this information-age, nine out of ten businesses have been found to not control the flow of company data to portable media devices. If that’s not disturbing enough, three out of four Australian workers apparently connect portable media devices such as iPods, USB sticks, PDAs, and Blackberrys to their company’s corporate network on a daily basis. This poses huge risks to the security of corporate data, according to an Australian survey by Centennial Software - developer of endpoint security and IT asset discovery solutions.
The survey that was conducted at the recent CeBIT 2006 exhibition in Sydney threw up startling results. Almost 50% of respondents surveyed by Centennial Software said that their workplace has no processes in place to control what devices they brought into the workplace. Twenty-eight per cent relied on the manager’s discretion. While six per cent workplaces banned portable devices entirely, only 15% made use of software to control specific devices on the network.
According to the survey, implementation of an acceptable usage policy will be the biggest challenge for IT compliance departments, with 61% of respondents admitting they were either unaware of such a policy being enforced or that no policy was in place.
“The proliferation of increasingly small, high-capacity devices has made it far easier for employees, contractors or visitors to inconspicuously download data from a computer and walk out the front door,” says Howard Waterson, Asia-Pacific regional manager for Centennial Software. As per the survey, USB sticks are the most common device connected to the corporate network (35%), followed by digital cameras (18%), PDAs (17%), mobile phones (16%) and iPods and MP3s (14%).
Comment on this story
Related Article: