Concern about the security risks posed by smartphones, tablets and third party applications has seen a 'monumental increase' in activations of more complex secure enterprise apps, most notably secure browsing, according to a new report.

Good Technology says its Mobility Index Report for Q1 2014 shows organisations are taking steps to mitigate security risks by leveraging secure mobile enterprise apps.

The report is drawn from Good Technology's tracking of activations across the breadth of mobile platforms and devices, leveraging findings from more than 5000 Good customers worldwide.

The report says organisations have declared security as a top IT concern for 2014.

Overall, secure enterprise app activations continued to see an impressive growth rate at 57% quarter over quarter, up from 54% and 43% the last two quarters, respectively.

Good Technology points out that the results are 'not surprising'. The 2014 State of Endpoint Risk report, published by The Ponemon Institute, highlighted mobile devices, such as smartphones, and third party apps as posing the greatest security risk within the IT environment.

The Good Mobility Index Report shows the total number of secure browsing app activations across Good Technology's customer base skyrocketed by 2900% this quarter, boosting it to the fifth most-activated app category, despite not making the top 10 in previous quarters.

“With the introduction of new secure browsing apps, such as Good Access, into the Good-secured ecosystem, organisations are taking full advantage of the ability to securely and seamlessly provide VPN-less access to their enterprise data.”

Secure app development continues to be an area of investment for companies, with custom app activations growing 77% quarter over quarter, a significant jump in the 55% growth reported in Q4 2013.

Other app categories seeing notable growth of over 100% quarter over quarter include mobile printing, notes and mobile unified communications, highlighting the growing trend of organisations moving beyond tasks like document editing and management and supplementing their mobile app strategies with more advanced, sopisticated apps.

Tablets recorded twice the number of enterprise app activations versus smartphones this quarter, while platform activations held steady with iOS comprising 72% of total device activations, with Android up one percentage point to 27%.