Many Canadian Companies Tackling Security Risks Posed by MP3 Players and Mobile Devices

TORONTO: According to a new Ipsos Reid poll conducted on behalf of Sun Microsystems of Canada, many Canadian businesses are recognizing the need to protect themselves from risk by monitoring and managing the portable storage devices their employees bring to work. In fact, half (49%) of senior leaders in mid- and large-sized businesses across Canada have established policies to prevent personal laptops and USB keys from entering the workplace and 30% have banned MP3 Players, such as iPods.

But while many of the companies polled are probably taking measures to prevent the risk of data loss due to security breach or theft, only 32% of the executives interviewed believed that their businesses perform at optimum levels to prevent and manage potential attack. Of those polled, approximately seven out of ten executives believe there is room for improvement for preventing risk among a mobile workforce.

Moreover:

• Seventeen percent admit that they have a very poor understanding of the risks associated with remote or wireless access; and
• Approximately one in ten believe that they are doing a poor job of mitigating risks (13%) and are not applying proper procedures to successfully deal with security breaches (11%).

Forty-two percent of surveyed executives believe that the greatest negative impact a security breach will have on their operations is theft of customer information.

Overall, Remote access is becoming increasingly important to Canadian businesses. Nine out of ten businesses (91%) surveyed provide company cell phones to some of their employees, and almost as many companies provide laptops to their employees to access their workplace from external locations. Currently, 22% of the Canadian workforce, on average, has remote access to the corporate Intranet, but this figure is expected to rise to almost 30%, on average, within the next year.

However, of those companies that did not offer remote access, 72% admitted that security concerns influenced their decision to prevent remote access.

These are the finding of a study conducted by Ipsos Reid for Sun Microsystems. For the survey, a total of 259 companies were interviewed. Data was collected from March to May 2006.

One senior respondent was qualified and interviewed from each company surveyed. The prerequisite qualification for each respondent was that they be senior decision makers within their company in either an IT or business executive capacity. This included CIOs, CTOs, Directors and Managers; business executives included, CEOs, Presidents, CFOs VPs, LOBs, Directors and Senior Managers.

Please open the attached PDF to view the factum and detailed tables.

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For more information on this news release, please contact:

Paul Orovan
Ipsos Reid Public Affairs
(416) 324-2900