Lack of corporate investment in enterprise mobility

Despite organisations embracing mobile devices for business as a top priority, only 29% have tested how well their core applications actually work on mobile devices.

That's according to a new survey published by Dimension Data, entitled the Secure Enterprise Mobility Report, which claims 79% of 1,622 organisations worldwide have executed a mobile strategy.

Delving deeper, the company reports that 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.

“This figure is startling, given the ubiquity of mobile devices being used by employees for work today," says Matthew Gyde, Dimension Data’s Global GM, 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.”

Gyde says 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, while 73% do not feel their organisations have well-defined policies around mobility.

This underinvestment in mobility has data security ramifications he adds.

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," adds Gyde, arguing that it is absolutely possible to realise productivity benefits without compromising security.

"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.

“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."