CDW report shows challenges of personal mobile devices in the workplace

The potential blessings of smartphones and tablets carry with them the potential curse of health information insecurity, but there is no ducking the challenges of both, according to a multi-industry survey of IT leaders.

Nine out of 10 of the 1,200 IT professionals surveyed across eight industries, including healthcare, expect the growing use of personal mobile devices to have a major impact on their organizations, while 92% indicate they've already encountered challenges in their organizations due to the devices, according to new report, “Mobility at Work,” by technology seller CDW, of Vernon Hills, Ill.

“Mobile computing taps and taxes every aspect of information technology management, and the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) phenomenon represents one of the greatest challenges for IT professionals, empowering worker choice and productivity while protecting the organization's network, data and assets,” the report authors said.

The top challenges with blending personal device use and the workplace are: security, cited by 55% of survey respondents; securing network access, 54%; network performance issues, 39%; and increased storage requirements, 37%.

Most IT pros (76%) indicated their organizations have formal guidelines on the use of personal mobile devices, but just 37% of their organizations either have deployed or are deploying mobile device management systems, the survey showed.

The survey also included responses from 1,200 “non-IT professionals,” labeled BYODers in the report, who use a smartphone or tablet for work at least once a week.

More than half (54%) of BYODers surveyed indicated that they used their personal devices for business applications beyond phone calls and e-mails, and 86% reported that they save or access work-related information on their own mobile devices. One in 20 (5%) reported they had either lost or had stolen a mobile device they had used for work.

The susceptibility of protected health information stored on mobile devices is a growing concern for healthcare organizations and policymakers.

In December, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology at HHS issued its guidance on mobile device security. According to data kept by the Office for Civil Rights, the lead federal enforcement agency of the privacy and security rules under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, about 16% of larger security breaches, those involving the records of 500 or more individuals, are attributed to "other portable electronic devices."

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