While it’s a growing trend for employees to use personal mobile devices for work, it’s also a growing security threat for businesses — one that few companies are taking measures to minimize, according to a report in BizTechAfrica.

The Global Corporate IT Security Risks 2013 survey, conducted by B2B International in collaboration with Kaspersky Lab, involved interviews with representatives of companies in 24 countries including South Africa.

Respondents in Japan expressed the most concern about this growing trend and its associated threats: 93 percent agreed that bring your own device, or BYOD, is a threat to their businesses. Companies in South Africa (75 percent) voiced a high level of concern; North America (69 percent); and Western Europe (62 percent). Russian companies were the least concerned, with 57 percent acknowledging any threat posed by a BYOD policy.

Most companies do not plan to introduce any prohibitive measures against the use of personal mobile devices at the workplace. About 21 percent of respondents said they plan to encourage the use of personal smartphones and tablets at work, while another 34 percent said they did not believe prohibitive measures would prevent employees from using their own devices.

Nevertheless, the percentage of companies globally that say they plan to restrict the use of personal devices for work purposes rose from 19 percent in 2012 to 25 percent in 2013. In South Africa the figure is 30 percent.

The survey shows that improper use of mobile employee devices is a frequent cause of IT security incidents, resulting in the loss of critical company data. Nearly 20 percent of respondents in South Africa said their companies had suffered confidential data leaks through mobile email clients, text messaging, and other channels available to smartphone and tablet owners.

But comparatively few companies are adopting specialized software products to protect themselves against such threats. Around 47 percent of companies in South Africa use antivirus solutions to integrate, protect and manage mobile devices on the corporate network, and only 18 percent use mobile device management solutions, BizTechAfrica reports.