Arik Hesseldahl

Recent Posts by Arik Hesseldahl

Most Businesses Probably Had a Mobile Security Incident in the Past Year

Image: Sergey Nivens / Shutterstock.com


Nearly 80 percent of large businesses experienced some kind of mobile security incident in the past year. And, of those, more than 60 percent experienced $100,000 or more in financial losses from that incident.

That’s the headline finding on a survey released today by security outfit Check Point. The company surveyed 790 IT professionals in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Germany and Japan, and this is the second survey of its kind by Check Point in as many years.

More than half of large businesses — 52 percent — say their incidents cost them $500,000 or more, while 45 percent of small businesses say their incidents cost them at least $100,000.

There were several interesting findings that go along with the growing “bring your own device” (BYOD) trend that a survey by Gartner found last month has been evolving into a requirement.

Here are a few more nuggets from the Check Point survey:

  • Some 53 percent of respondents say there is sensitive customer data stored on mobile devices, which is up from 47 percent last year.
  • About half say they think the mobile operating system with the greatest security risk is Google’s Android, versus Apple’s iOS, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile. This is up from 30 percent last year.
  • Nearly half of all businesses have seen a fivefold increase in the number of mobile devices on their network in two years. Nearly all of them, 96 percent, say the number of personal devices on their networks is growing.

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