PDAs leave business secrets unprotected

The PDA Usage survey has found that PDA owners commonly download the entire contents of their personal and business lives onto their PDAs - with many leaving the information unencrypted and without password protection.

PIN numbers, passwords, customer details, bank accounts, credit card & social security details are just some of the highly confidential and personal pieces of information people are storing unprotected on their PDAs.

One in four users are not bothering to protect their PDA with a password, even though over a third are using it as a business tool to store confidential corporate information and to access their corporate networks.

Pointsec Mobile Technologies and Infosecurity Europe commissioned the survey into PDA usage to find out the top 10 most common functions of the PDA and how well users are protecting the information they store on them.

The survey was conducted among 332 IT and sales personnel of which 43% are working for corporate organisations employing 1,000 or more staff.

Other findings of the survey show that:

• 25% of those who store their own passwords and PIN numbers on their PDA do not bother to use a password to restrict access to their own PDA.
• Of the people who store their bank account details on their PDA, 65% do not bother to encrypt this information, with just under a quarter not password protecting this information.
• 23% of PDAs are company owned, with 2 out of 3 being supplied without any formal PDA policy or guidelines on the importance of password protection and encryption.
• 36% use their PDA to download corporate information with 7 out of 10 leaving it unencrypted.

Magnus Ahlberg, Managing Director of Pointsec Mobile Technologies, said:

"The survey shows that people are using their PDAs as portable mini-filing cabinets, storing every essence of their personal and business lives on them, and yet oblivious to the fact that without password protection anyone can access this information.

"As organisations go mobile they need to encrypt their information, which is like having walls to your office. It takes a thief merely seconds to hotsync information from a PDA using a laptop or PC if it is unencrypted and not password protected. Therefore, it is imperative to secure all confidential information held on PDAs."

The survey found that the top 10 functions people use their PDAs for are:

1. To store personal names and addresses 96%
2. As a business diary 89%
3. As a personal diary 86%
4. For entertainment such as games, music etc. 49%
5. To store passwords/PIN numbers 46%
6. To receive e-mails 40%
7. To create documents/spreadsheets 37%
8. To store corporate information 36%
9. To store bank accounts 29%
10. Travel updates 29%

The survey highlighted the fact that users clearly perceive the information held on their PDAs as highly valuable. Of the 6% who have lost them in the past, 32% still continue to use them without a password.