Lack of Corporate Investment In Enterprise Mobility

MEDIA RELEASE

New Survey Reveals Lack of Corporate Investment In Enterprise Mobility

    Inadequate strategy, policy and employee engagement opens up security and governance risks

Wellington, New Zealand – 17 October 2013 – A new survey published today by Dimension Data reveals that while 79% of 1,622 organisations across the globe that were polled are embracing mobile devices for business as a top priority, a low 29% percentage of those companies executing a mobility strategy have tested how well their core applications actually work on mobile devices.  In addition, many organisations are not dedicating the resources that are necessary to fully enable users to leverage existing business applications in ways that increase productivity.

Furthermore, according to the Dimension Data Secure Enterprise Mobility Report, support resources for mobility appear to be an afterthought for many organisations, with only 35% of the survey respondents reporting they’ve addressed troubleshooting mobility at all. 

Dimension Data surveyed IT and security professionals in organisations with more than 250 employees in 22 countries across Asia, Europe, Middle East & Africa, and the Americas.

“This figure is startling, given the ubiquity of mobile devices being used by employees for work today.” says Matthew Gyde, Dimension Data’s Global General Manager, Security Solutions.  “Without taking these steps, IT departments could be at risk of delivering sub-optimal user experiences that will inhibit adoption – and as importantly, they’ll miss out on the chance to proactively identify and solve security challenges before they become threats.”
Other startling statistics in the Secure Enterprise Mobility Report include:
• The majority of survey participants - 61% - indicated that employees are unable to access core applications necessary to perform their job functions from their mobile devices.
• 73% do not feel that their organisations have well-defined policies around mobility.

This underinvestment in mobility has data security ramifications. Furthermore, the survey results also reveal that many organisations are not conducting appropriate application testing, making them even more vulnerable:  only 32% of respondents said they’ve conducted security audits of applications touched by mobile devices.

“Our survey results tell us that security fears may be hindering productivity benefits.  Over 77% of survey participants said that information security and privacy concerns are the greatest challenge they expect to face when they build and implement a mobility strategy,” he explains and argues that it is absolutely possible to realise productivity benefits without compromising security.

“It requires making time to determine precise mobility requirements and identify IT policies required to control deployments, manage risks and support users before they move to the implementation phase.  

“Mobility is particularly complex and touches most parts of an organisation’s network infrastructure.  This means that organisations must take into account numerous facets of the business. This includes security policy, risk assessment, costs of operational support, and the effects on application service delivery and employee productivity.  Ultimately the business case must establish a balance that maximises the utility of a company’s resources for each of the stakeholders involved.”

Click here to read Dimension Data’s full Secure Enterprise Mobility Report.

ENDS

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