Employee fears over what data from their personal mobiles can be accessed by employers are not unjustified, says a new survey, just misplaced.
Employee fears over what data from their personal mobiles can be accessed by employers are not unjustified, says a new survey, just misplaced.
Mobile IT vendor MobileIron surveyed 3,000 employees across three countries to discover the biggest concerns when it comes to BYOD (bring your own device) programs at work – with some surprising results.
And the survey may be even more relevant to your brokerage than you think. According to MobileIron, over 80% of workers now use personal smartphones and tablets at work. Previous studies show that many employees are reluctant to inform the company when they do so.
“People absolutely want to use mobile technologies of their own choice to do their work. If the company doesn’t support their efforts to do so, they will go around IT and figure out a way to do it anyway,” said the report.
“You already have a BYOD program whether or not you think you do.”
The biggest concerns employees have regarding employer access to their data is around emails, texts and personal contacts. Photos, videos and voicemails were also mentioned by a significant number of employees.
“Communications and images most accurately capture the daily life of an individual, so it is not at all surprising that these sets of information have the highest privacy risk in the eyes of the employee.”
At the same time, the survey found a concerning 41% think that employers can’t see anything at all on their mobile devices, and only 28% think their employers can see their company email.
As the report highlights “employees consistently underestimate the visibility their employers have into company data, and consistently overestimate the visibility their employers have into personal data”.
So what do employers really have access to? It depends on the operating system and company policy, says MobileIron, but on iOS, for example, the following could be available:
- Carrier and country
- Make, model, OS version
- Device identifier (e.g. IMEI).
- Phone number
- Complete list of apps installed
- Location of device
- Battery level
- Storage capacity and use
- Corporate email and attachments (via Exchange server same as PC)
- Corporate contacts (via Exchange server same as PC)
And the following, you can safely assume, can only be seen by anyone that can physically hold your phone:
- Information in apps — unless the app has been built to transmit information to a corporate server
- Personal email and attachments
- Texts
- Photos
- Videos
- Web browsing activity
- Voicemails
According to the survey, just 30% of employees “completely trust” their employers to keep their personal information private.
“On one hand, it is surprising this number isn’t smaller and the ‘trust gap’ isn’t bigger, because privacy is clearly in the public eye. On the other hand, people regularly expose personal data to consumer apps and services and have arguably gotten somewhat nonchalant about sharing their information.”
In order to keep company information private, and allay the concerns of employees over their private information, employers need to be open in their communication surrounding BYOD, says the report.
“Nature abhors a vacuum and, in the absence of clear communication, employees will make assumptions about how their mobile data is being managed by their employer…. Over-communication is far preferable to under-communication.”
See also: Are mobile brokers a data risk?
