News > Geek > Vital Data Often Unencrypted on Vulnerable Devices

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TUESDAY NOVEMBER 15 2005 4:00 PM

Vital Data Often Unencrypted on Vulnerable Devices

Submitted by WilWheaton

Edited by s5

One in three mobile computers and smartphones is not protected with a password or security lock, even though they contain PIN codes and sensitive information, a survey showed on Monday.

"Three out of 10 of these sloppy handheld happy users store their PIN numbers, passwords and other corporate information on them," according to the annual Mobile Usage Survey from security software firm Pointsec.

But these geniuses are storing much more than their own data on these devices:

According to the global survey, corporate personnel now store huge amounts of corporate data on their mobile devices, including customer contacts, email details, passwords and bank account details as well as personal and private information.

Well, at least they're careful with their mobile devices . . . right?

More people than ever admit to having lost their mobile device. This year, 22 percent of interviewees said they had lost their device against 16 percent in 2004. Of those who lost their smartphone or handheld computer, 81 percent had not encrypted the information on it.

Paris Hilton and Vida Guerra were unavailable for comment at press time.

Comments

gtwr

United Kingdom

October 2005

NOV 15, 2005 04:08 PM

I store passwords, financial information on my laptop and my mobile phone, but both those have secure passwords and encryption. I might sound a bit callous, but I don't have any sympathy for people who store corporate data & other senstive data on mobile devices without a password and encryption. When I worked for a large computer company, they insisted that everyone had a power on & hard disk password on the company laptops and would run regular checks to ensure this was the case.