Indian firms largely in favour using mobile devices for work

Seven out of ten Indian companies believe that the benefits of using mobile devices by employees for official work equals or outweigh the risks and a significant number of respondents ensure that the device has proper safeguards, said a Symantec Software India Pvt Ltd official.

Sharing the results of a survey of 200 Indian companies on mobile trends, managing director (India Product Operations) Shantanu Ghosh said: "One in two companies have taken measures to ensure employees adhere to policy guidelines. 45 percent of the companies surveyed have ensured that mobile devices that connect to the network have proper safeguards installed."

According to him, 72 percent of the Indian businesses surveyed have faced mobility incidents (malware infection, spam, exposures of information, breaches due to lost/stolen devices, phishing and other risks) out of which 37 percent have lost revenue and 86 percent had to change their policies.

He said 55 percent of the respondents to the survey said that over half the devices are purchased by the organisation and this is expected to increase by five percent in the next 12 months.

However, Ghosh said increasingly employees are using their own devices to carry out their official work and companies are also looking at the trend positively subject to certain safeguards.

Sharing the details of another survey "2012 Norton Cybercrime Report", Ghosh said 69 percent of the Indian consumers access the web on their mobile devices.

"Thirty one percent of the respondents said they send work emails; 25 percent access office data or documents and 44 percent said they use personal emails for work correspondence," Ghosh said.

According to the online survey of 13,018 adults in the age band 18-64 years across 24 countries (Indian sample size 1,000 persons), 68 percent of Indians are the most addicted to their mobile phones across the Asia Pacific region.