By Daniel Hunter

The way business is conducted in the UK is rapidly changing as the cloud and mobile computing devices take over from corporate servers and office based IT systems. Employees working from their own tablet computers and mobile devices allow companies greater flexibility, speed and can even improve productivity but what are the security implications?

“The Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) share of the UK business IT market increases year on year,” said Gary David Smith — the co-founder of Prism Total IT Solutions.

“Something like 65% of British companies of all sizes say that they allow BYOD’s onto their business networks in some way but the vast majority of these companies do not employ any sort of management or security regarding these devices.

“Having company data and information available to employees on personal devices allows great work flexibility and mobility but it also makes it more liable to be lost or available to competitors."

A global survey of 790 IT professionals (including in Great Britain) conducted this month by Check Point revealed that careless employees pose a far greater threat (66%) to business data than cyber criminals (34%).

Another issue that is unfortunately becoming more common place is that of employees simply losing or misplacing mobile devices that contain company data.

“Apart from data security there are also issues of performance and control,” said Gary David Smith.

“There can be problems with the compatibility over operating systems. Home operating systems can cause connectivity issues in business environments.

“Even if business applications are loaded on BYOD’s most individuals won’t only have business software on their personal device. Inevitably they will also have entertainment applications like iTunes, Games, Peer 2 Peer software or Facebook. These can all cause issues, slow machines down, and potentially introduce viruses which can be costly in terms of business downtime,” he said.

Digital Marketing moves at lightening pace and marketers need access to the latest information and advice - a new event – The Digital Marketing Show is taking place in Excel, London in November - visit www.digitalmarketingshow.co.uk

Join us on
Follow @freshbusiness