Mobile devices threaten SMEs

risk because of the proliferation of mobile devices used in the workplace, Mobilisafe, a Seattle-based mobile security company, found, based on interim results of its small and mid-sized business (SME)-focused beta study, eWeek reveals.

As part of the beta, SME participants evaluated a product that provides visibility to all mobile devices accessing their company's network.

Over the course of three months, Mobilisafe mapped more than 38 million employee mobile device connections that provided key data for their analysis and interim results. The majority of SMEs are highly mobilised, driven by the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend of recent years, but SME IT managers significantly underestimate the number and kinds of mobile devices connecting to their networks.

The data gathered through Mobilisafe's initial beta run is more of a confirmation of the market value for its mobile security solution, meant to simplify the challenges involved with assessing security risk and then knowing the next steps to take after being presented with specific issues, Tech Crunch reports.

Mobilisafe has been quietly running a private beta since late last year. Companies use its SaaS solution to tell Mobilisafe what kind of risk threshold they have, and then the start-up does the heavy lifting to determine whether they're falling above or below that threshold. The whole thing can be deployed in 15 minutes, without hardware or network changes, on-device software, or changes to employee behaviour, the start-up says.