Half of the executives surveyed in a new report from Deloitte say their organizations have bring-your-own-device programs, and the study says the growth of BYOD raises questions about how often policies should be updated and communicated to employees as well as how such co-mingling of devices could impact the security of organization assets and proprietary information.
BYOD also creates complications with preserving the increasing volumes of company data stored on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets in the event it is required for legal discovery, according to the report, “Getting Smart about Smartphone Technology.”
The survey shows that only about half of executives are confident that their organization can preserve mobile device data for litigation, regulatory or investigation matters, and during the past year 15 percent of executives’ organizations have had to preserve mobile device data for those reasons.
“While mobile devices are great for workplace collaboration, they aren’t as easy to manage as computers are for quick data collection and preservation when a lawsuit, regulatory inquiry or internal investigation looms,” Michael Weil, director in Deloitte Discovery, Deloitte Financial Advisory Services LLP, said in a statement.
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“Unlike computers, where data can often be collected remotely, someone must physically touch mobile devices to collect and preserve the evidence on them,” Weil said. “That creates a business disruption for employees when they have to surrender the devices.”
According to the survey, the greatest threats to mobile device data preservation include the always-changing state of mobile device data (29 percent), the speed at which applications are developed and adopted (17 percent) and some devices’ natural data deletion (10 percent).
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