According to a new report from Juniper Research – Mobile Security Strategies: Threats, Solutions & Market Forecasts 2012-2017 – 350 million employees will be using their own devices for work by 2014.
A report from Information Week says that currently, 150 million people use their own phones and tablet in the office. Therefore, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) users will more than double in the enterprise within the next few years.
Experts in the report call the movement “a security nightmare,” and they call for new IT policies for users and proper device management.
Risks to the BYOD crowd include many of the same suffered by desktop computer users, including spam, malware and phishing. But workers using mobile devices face a major addition problem: device loss.
Another trend addressed in the report is mCommerce – using mobile phones or tablets to pay for retail items, which could make the cellphone a prime target for criminals to hack, the article says.