The Portable Puzzle

When it comes to developing solutions for managing the security of mobile and portable storage devices, IT executives' attitudes can be summed up in one word: frustrated.

That's the word that best describes the responses we've received to Dark Reading's portable and mobile security survey over the past month. Security professionals say they are frustrated by their inability to enforce policies for securing mobile devices, and their inability to find adequate technology solutions among a plethora of rapidly-developing products.

As we saw in Part 1 of our survey analysis last week (See No Wires & No Policies.), corporations and large organizations are having trouble developing enforceable policies for securing portable devices. While 42 percent of respondents said their organizations maintain an "unplugged" philosophy for most users, approximately 61 percent said they either haven't got a policy for removable storage devices, or their organizations were vulnerable because their policy was unenforceable. About 28 percent of respondents said their policies for mobile device management were either nonexistent or unenforceable.

A major reason for these policy shortcomings is the dearth of viable technology for managing the security of devices that travel outside company walls, security professionals say. In our survey, 47 percent of respondents said current products for managing removable storage were inadequate or nonexistent; about 46 percent said the same is true of products for securing mobile and wireless devices.

Get the full story at Dark Reading.Tim Wilson, Site Editor, Dark Reading