Personal mobile devices pose the greatest risk within business networks

Personal mobile devices are the biggest threat to a business network. Although employees work from home, or like the BYOD principle, both pose a great risk to IT and security teams.

That’s what a new investigation by Duo Security shows. The company interviewed one hundred British IT professionals and found that, according to 58 percent of them, network access via non-business and personal devices – including laptops, desktops and mobile devices – poses the greatest risk when managing users working from home.

High flexibility

Duo’s research also found that in 75 percent of cases, employees now spend 25 percent of their time away from the office. This provides enormous flexibility and makes it possible for companies around the world to attract talent for their companies. But the downside lies in the enormous security challenges that come with it.

Richard Archdeacon, one of Duo’s researchers, said: business mobility is one of the biggest challenges in IT security and personal devices are a huge blind spot. If you don’t know what’s connected to the network, how can you protect data? What is clear from the study is that IT decision-makers are not entirely comfortable with the large number of devices that are now entering the workplace.

External parties

When it comes to different groups of employees working from home, for example, 48 percent of security professionals say that external suppliers and service providers are among the most risky groups. At the same time, sales staff and support staff are mentioned as risk groups within the company’s own employees.

Now that employees seem to be used to being able to work from other locations than the office, it is unlikely that they will give up this privilege. This means that IT teams have to find a way to protect their networks anyway.