Network Security, Threat Management

Companies still sacrificing security for expediency, study

Companies are sacrificing security for expediency and intentionally putting speed and profits before mobile security.

Verizon's 2018 Mobile Security Index surveyed over 600 professionals involved in procuring and managing mobile devices for their organizations and found that 32 percent of its respondents admitted to sacrificing mobile security to improve expediency or business performance while 38 percent of those same organizations said their organizations were at a significant risk from mobile threats.

The most common threats that mobile devices played a part in included denial of service, geolocation attacks, information disclosures, spoofing, and tampering.

Healthcare organizations were hit hard in particular by these attacks with 35 percent of them suffering data loss or downtime due to a mobile device security incident.

“Healthcare has the unenviable task of guarding large amounts of highly sensitive and personal data, while also providing quick access for medical practitioners,” researchers said in the report. “These risks need to be weighed against speed and accessibility.”

As a result, added security features which may complicated access to systems could do more harm particular in emergency situations which may be why healthcare companies were most likely to say that they have knowingly sacrificed security for expediency or business performance with 41 percent admitting to doing so compared to an average of 32 percent across all industries.

Risk increase substantially for the sector when the IOT devices are involved as threat actors could potentially gain control of medical equipment and devices.

The study found that financial services companies were most likely to agree that IoT is the greatest security threat facing organizations with 93 percent agreeing, and 19 percent of those strongly agreeing.

Researchers speculated the feelinsg where driven by new entrants and the fin-tech revolution forcing incumbent players to innovate and adopt new technologies, such as IOT devices, more quickly.

The report also found that companies who are concerned about the threats mobile devices pose to both their data and the interpreted business operations with 27 percent of respondents saying that a mobile device played a key role in a security incident resulting in data loss or system downtime within the last year.

Get daily email updates

SC Media's daily must-read of the most current and pressing daily news

By clicking the Subscribe button below, you agree to SC Media Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.