BANGALORE: A Kaspersky Lab survey of global IT security professionals has found that as the rate of stolen mobile devices has increased, the average time for IT departments to respond to this security threat has also grown. The cause of this delay is employees becoming slower to notify their employers of missing devices, with only half of employees reporting theft quickly. Across businesses that experienced mobile device theft, 19% said the device theft resulted in the loss of business data, meaning businesses have approximately a one-in-five chance of losing data if a corporate mobile device is stolen.

The Risk Is Up, But Employee Urgency is Down

After receiving input from thousands of IT security managers around the world as part of the company’s 2014 IT Security Risks survey, Kaspersky Lab can report that more than one-third of employees (38 percent) take up to two days to notify their employers of stolen mobile devices, and 9 percent of employees wait three – five days. The percentage of employees who notified their employers the same day the incident occurred decreased from 60 percent to 50 percent from 2013 to 2014. This delay can create a significant window of vulnerability and makes the loss of sensitive business data more likely.

The survey also found that the rate of mobile device theft overall has continued to climb over the years, with 25 percent of companies experiencing the theft of a mobile device in 2014, a significant increase from the 14 percent reported in 2011. However, as stolen devices become more common, employees appear to be responding more slowly, with only half of employees in 2014 reported a stolen device on the same day the incident occurred. The growing prevalence of stolen mobile devices may be a contributing factor to employee apathy, since a stolen smartphone might now be seen as a somewhat common occurrence, and not a rare crisis that demands attention.

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