Mobile working is not being safeguarded consistently: only every fifth mobile storage medium (19 per cent) is currently completely encrypted, and another 19 per cent are at least partially encrypted in such a way that the confidential data is protected.

This is the result of a world-wide security survey by Utimaco including 1,117 business users from all areas, primarily telecoms & IT (28 per cent), the financial sector (15 per cent) and public services (12 per cent), in January.

Eighty-three per cent of respondents consider the protection of their memory media important to very important, but this percentage equals the total proportion of unencrypted or partially encrypted devices. To make things more difficult, when it comes to the inconsistency of business user behavior, almost three quarters (72 per cent) of the respondents use at least two, to a maximum of an entire dozen, of these data media. And, already, every fourth respondent (27 per cent) has lost at least one of them. According to the details, they have on average lost two to three memory media.

The majority of participants (86 per cent) primarily used the memory media for exchanging data with other people. Nearly two thirds (63 per cent) value the small "data silos" as back-up devices. When asked about the types of data usually stored and exchanged (multiple responses were possible), 65 per cent mentioned personal photos, 42 per cent used them for personal data (such as account information or correspondence with government bodies), 32 per cent for customer information, 26 per cent for financial figures, 27 per cent for contract details, 36 per cent for contact data, 10 per cent for sales targets and 39 per cent for other things such as programs and applications. As business-critical and confidential data form an enormously high proportion of memory contents, it is essential to prevent the risks of loss or theft of a memory medium with security software.

The majority of respondents (96 per cent) use USB memory sticks as mobile data media, and 53 per cent use memory cards. Currently, the usual memory capacity used by respondents was 1 gigabyte (43 per cent) and 512 megabytes (28 per cent). 6 per cent said they could manage with 128 megabytes memory. In contrast, 23 per cent of participants seemed to need to transport huge data volumes, up to 2 gigabytes and more. Memory performance of this kind is critical, because it is large enough to copy the entire contents of databases, complex design or development data and to remove this information from companies unnoticed.

Only 7 per cent of the respondents said that their employer has introduced consistent security policies for the storage, processing and transfer of data. Approximately every eighth company (12 per cent) is currently using at least one security solution that automatically secures data that is transferred onto memory media and might leave the company. Surprisingly, 8 per cent of participants in the survey admitted that their employer has a security policy but it is not in force.

[This seems to indicate that the gap in understanding the consequences of portable memory at all - and of the development in the capacity of these devices - is huge at management level. It looks as if security functions are either way behind the curve - or incapable of getting the ear of management. We badly need legislation in the UK mandating disclosure of security leaks, both in the public and the private sector, and huge fines for privacy breaches. Not enough CEOs are fired for security mismanagement! --Ed].

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