Many federal employees use personal smartphones and other devices to access official email and documents, according to a report in USA Today.
A survey, commissioned by Lookout, Inc., surveyed 1,000 employees from 20 civilian, intelligence and military agencies and found that:
- 60 percent are aware of the risks of using their personal devices for work;
- 85 percent of those employees do it anyway;
- 40 percent of employees whose agencies explicitly prohibit using personal devices for work say they don’t necessarily abide by the policy.
“The challenge for security professionals is to accept that reality,and come up with a proactive solution,” said Roger Cressey, a cybersecurity expert and former National Security Council official, quoted in USA Today. “Mobile devices are now part of our everyday life in a way that no federal chief information officer ever anticipated.”
