For many, the smartphone is a device to be cossetted, wrapped securely in the ballistic case version of cotton wool and saved from scratches and scrapes by screen protectors. Unless it’s a work smartphone, of course, for as Trend Micro has discovered, work smartphones are about as loved as leg-tags.
The Antivirus and Internet Protection firm’s research has revealed that careless company users are over twice as likely to lose their smartphone, with some 27 per cent of slipshod employees managing to work their way through up to three business-issued mobiles compared to just 11 per cent who permanently misplace personal phones.
Trend Micro’s survey questioned some 2,500 adults in the UK and uncovered an IT manager-inconveniencing complete and utter attitude of none-toss-giving when it came to company phones; or as they’ve officially labelled it: a “culture of carelessness”.
And it gets worse. Not only are the UK’s smartphone-toting taskforce lackadaisical when it comes to losing their devices, a further 31 per cent confessed to hooking up with seedy street hotspots on a regular basis and a whoppingly worrying 56 per cent of that number to never checking security levels beforehand.
Naturally, concern ran high over the idea of cyber-crims potentially pinching-off with personal data but, serving as another savage slap in the face for big business, only 3 per cent expressed concern when it came to corporate info being blagged – something which should be even more of an alarm-ringer seeing as 57 per cent didn’t even bother with a basic passcode lock.
All worrying stuff for company Q Departments, but is news of such nonchalance toward company kit really such a surprise? In other events: bear defecates in wood; Pope admits Catholicism…
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