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Apple iOS leading among corporate users, Android deemed most risky

A new study on the use of mobile devices in corporate environments shows Apple's iOS overtaking RIM's BlackBerry in popularity, while third place Android is described as the "most risky" mobile platform in terms of security problems.

The report, published by security firm Check Point, surveyed 768 IT professionals in the US, Canada, UK, Germany and Japan.

It described "extensive use" of mobile devices in corporate networks, noting that 89 percent of sites now support the use of devices such as smartphones and tablets.

The use of employee's personal devices on corporate networks is also growing, with, on average, 65 percent of companies surveyed officially allowing access to their employee's personally owned devices in addition to company-owned hardware.

Apple takes RIM's corporate crown

Apple's iOS accounted for 30 percent of mobile devices in use on corporate networks, narrowly beating RIM's BlackBerry devices at 29 percent. Third place Android represented 21 percent of users, just ahead of Windows Mobile/Windows Phone, which accounted for 18 percent.

In terms of security risks, however, Android was cited being the worst, with 43 percent calling out Google's mobile platform. Apple's iOS was deemed a security risk by 36 percent, while RIM's BlackBerry faired best with 22 percent ranking it a security risk.

Of all respondents, 71 percent agreed that the use of mobile devices in general were a contributing factor to the number of security incidents their organizations were facing. The leading cause for security concerns among mobile device use related to a lack of employee awareness.

Careless actions by employees were seen as being roughly three times as dangerous as the activity of "hackers," with 72 percent saying that employee errors posed a greater security threat to organizations than outside attacks.

However, other security risk factors related to platform itself, including insecure WiFi networking and web browsing, downloading of apps corrupted by malware, and a lack of security patches from service providers.



27 Comments

september11th 15 Years · 68 comments

I've been using iOS for years, but just got a kindle fire (built on android), and you really can feel the difference in stability and security. Amazon has an official (but extremely limited) app store, so to find a larger selection of apps to install you have to search in the wild, google etc, and, truthfully, anything can be junk or a virus or something harmful, it's really impossible to know. It's not like on a PC where most everything you find is trusted and you have full control and virus protection.. I feel like the potential to exploit android or for users to mess up their devices is a real issue. It's only a matter of time before hackers and whatever start hitting phones with viruses and malware, and Android will certainly be the easiest target.

anantksundaram 19 Years · 20391 comments

But, but..... how can this be!? It's open! It does Flash! The screens are bigger! There's more choice! The processors are faster! The camera has more MPs! Apple is walled garden!

tallest skil 15 Years · 43086 comments

Quote:
Originally Posted by anantksundaram

but, but..... How can this be!? It's open! It does flash! The screens are bigger! There's more choice! The processors are faster! The camera has more mps! Apple is walled garden!


physical keyboards, even!

sflocal 17 Years · 6150 comments

Quote:
Originally Posted by anantksundaram

But, but..... how can this be!? It's open! It does Flash! The screens are bigger! There's more choice! The processors are faster! The camera has more MPs! Apple is walled garden!


Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil

physical keyboards, even!

And it can be rooted, and it can do all other kinds of fantastic, amazing things that 99% of the general smartphone-owning public couldn't give a rat's a$$ about.

friedlobster 14 Years · 330 comments

SAY NO TO Android = malware/spyware/virus