Most Consumers Don’t Lock Mobile Phone Via PIN, by Ed Hansberry, DARKReading, InformationWeek©

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My guess is that most people who use a smart phone access some kind of confidential information, such as your bank account or conversations with a client or the office. If you do not have a PIN lock on your smart phone, this truly is special kind of stupid.

This is not a hard one to understand. If you use your cell phone to communicate with clients, sync your phone to your office computer and docket, or attach yourself to your office and confidential information – without taking simple, basic security measures – you are  inviting a dangerous breach of confidentiality. -CCE

44% of respondents say it’s too much of a hassle, new survey reports.

People put a lot of sensitive info on their phones, but they often give little though to how secure their data is. In a survey by a security company, over half of the respondents said they didn’t bother with a PIN lock. This takes on a whole new dimension when you begin to understand how many of these people keep corporate data on the device.

Losing an unlocked phone can be far worse than losing a wallet. Emails on the device alone can reveal a wealth of information about the person, including where they bank, where they live, names of family members, and more. If company email is on the device, and it often is, there can be competitive information, salaries, system passwords, etc. If any of those emails contain links, often clicking on it will take you into the website, be it Facebook or a corporate portal.

According to Confident Technologies, 65% of users have corporate data on their phone, even though only 10% actually have a corporate issued device.

For that majority that don’t lock their phone at all, 44% said it is too much of a hassle to lock it and 30% said they weren’t worried about security. These are likely the same people that store things like social security numbers, passwords, and other sensitive information in text files or basic note applications. They may even store their computer’s password on a Post-It Note in their center desk drawer. . . .

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