Symantec’s 2012 State of Mobility survey aims to evaluate how organizations are coping with mobile devices and the trend to use the new channel to improving corporate agility.

Companies are certainly worried about device or data loss and malware infecting the corporate network through smartphones and tablets, but still believe that the benefits outnumber the risks.

The Survey highlights three key points:

  1. Tipping point in mobility adoption

    Times are changing for companies, since mobile devices have become essential tools for conducting business. Employees are seeing significantly improved productivity by being able to access business resources from anywhere. Thus, organizations are now commonly making line-of-business applications accessible from mobile devices. In fact, now that mobile devices are commonplace, nearly three quarters of businesses are looking at implementing a corporate “store” for mobile applications.

    In order to better understand why organizations are adopting mobile computing, Symantec asked them about the most important business benefits and received as answers: increased efficiency, increased workplace effectiveness and reduced time required to accomplish tasks - all benefitting companies’ business agility.

  2. Mobile initiatives significantly impacting IT resources

    Mobile computing is regarded as extremely challenging and hard to manage and ranks top of all risks with 41% – higher than any other initiative, including virtualization, Web 2.0 and even public cloud computing. In fact, IT staff involved in some way with mobile computing reported that they have a variety of concerns, including device loss, data leakage, unauthorized access to corporate resources and malware infection. In response to these perceived risks, most organizations are at least discussing a range of security measures, from antivirus software to remote disabling of devices. When it comes to implementing these measures, however, less than half have taken those steps, stays Symantec.

  3. Mobile risks impacting organizations

    Small and large businesses alike are seeing damages mount due to mobility-related security issues. They have suffered a variety of losses, measured by direct financial expenses, loss of data, and damage to the brand or loss of customer trust.

In the end, however, most organizations feel that mobility is worth the challenges. Nearly three-quarters (71%) feel that they at least break even on the risks vs. rewards.

By Daniela La Marca