Company Announcement - HID Global®, a worldwide leader in secure identity solutions has revealed that security and compliance are a major concern for CIOs and IT departments across the Middle East, as a result of the increased usage of mobile devices by employees. A survey conducted by HID Global across the Middle East region found that 97 percent of the respondents said that the widespread use of mobile devices by employees, has significantly increased their organisations risk profile for security breaches, data loss and/or compliance issues.

Respondents to the survey included CIOs, CTOs, IT department heads and decision makers from the banking and finance sector, healthcare, oil & gas, and the government sectors. The survey revealed that all of the respondents’ organisations extensively used multiple mobile devices such as notebooks, tablets, and smartphones. However, the most significant cause for concern for 83 percent of the respondents in terms of security and compliance challenges was found to be malware on an employee’s device. 95 percent of the respondents said their organisation had not suffered any security breaches in the past 12 months.

“The findings indicate that CIOs and IT departments are clearly concerned about the risks and challenges associated with increased use of mobile devices by employees,” said Andrew Lintell, Director of Sales, Identity Assurance, EMEA with HID Global. “However, it is encouraging to see that security and compliance is high on the agenda for organisations, even though they have not experienced any breaches in recent times.”

While organisations acknowledge that cloud-based storage services are widely used among employees, 34 percent said that they strongly discouraged or prohibited users from using these services to access company data or services. The findings further revealed that 42 percent of respondents provided unofficial advice and support when problems related to cloud-based services occurred, while only 4 percent believe the use of personal devices to access cloud-based applications and/or cloud services to be of concern.  Additional survey findings include:

• Lost or stolen devices were a concern for 8 percent of the respondents, and the lack of enterprise best practices for using mobile devices was a concern for 5 percent of the respondents.
• When asked about two-factor authentication 86 percent highlighted that this type of authentication has already been deployed and was a company-wide requirement to secure mobile devices,
• Three percent said that multi-factor authentication was used only for certain applications or at certain levels of employee access.
• At the same time, 10 percent of the respondents said they were uncertain if two-factor authentication solutions are being used by their organisation.

Prevention is always better than cure, which is why HID Global recommends deploying simple, convenient and cost effective multi-factor authentication solutions, to ensure user convenience, and to prevent problems from occurring in the first place. At GITEX Technology Week we will demonstrate exactly how solutions such as our ActivID® Tap Authentication™ platform can provide convenient and secure multi-factor authentication to cloud applications and web services. With cost-effective, sophisticated solutions such as this, employees with an organisation can continue being productive while enjoying top-notch security and convenience.