ASEAN Businesses at Risk of Data Breaches as More Than One in Three Use Unapproved Personal Devices for Work: VMware Study

ASEAN Businesses at Risk of Data Breaches as
More Than One in Three Use Unapproved Personal Devices for Work: VMware Study

Companies must provide employees with digital
workspaces that are consumer simple and enterprise secure, as 81 percent use
personal devices at work and more than 1 in 3 do not comply with IT policies

SINGAPORE, 6 April, 2017 – VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), a global leader in cloud infrastructure
and business mobility, today announced findings from a new VMware Digital
Workspace Study, which highlights that ASEAN businesses may be at risk as more
than 1 in 3 (35 percent) are using unapproved personal devices for work.
In addition, 38 percent of respondents surveyed do not comply with their
company’s IT policies or do not know them at all, increasing companies’
exposure to data breaches and business risks. Interestingly, Singapore topped
the list, with 1 in 2 respondents (50 percent) who indicated that they do not
always comply with IT policies or do not know them at all.

The VMware Digital Workspace Study highlights:

·         Organisations in ASEAN prone to data breaches
as 81 percent users in the region use their personal devices for work.

o    Thailand (88 percent) followed by Indonesia
(86 percent) were the highest users of personal devices for work followed by
Malaysia (79 percent) and Singapore (71 percent).

o    65 percent of users across the region use
mobile devices to check work emails and 41 percent to access work files.

o    38 percent of users make use of mobile devices
to conduct financial transactions. This functionality was the most popular in
Thailand (52 percent) followed by Malaysia (37 percent). At 28 percent,
respondents in Singapore were least keen on making financial transactions via a
mobile device.

·         Business vulnerability to hacks and
cyber-attacks could leapfrog as more than one in three (35 percent) of users
who use personal devices for work, do not have them approved by IT and at least
38 percent do not comply with IT policies.

o    Singapore and Malaysia (both at 38 percent)
had the highest proportion of all users who use unapproved personal devices at
work closely followed by Indonesia (34 percent) and Thailand (30 percent).

o    At 50 percent, Singapore had the most number
of people who did not always comply with IT policies or did not know them at
all. This is followed by Malaysia at 42 percent, Indonesia (38 percent) and
Thailand (24 percent).

·         Struggles with end-user and interface
experience could adversely impact productivity as at least 79 percent of all
respondents had difficulties when using work apps.

o    Having too many passwords to remember (38
percent) was the top challenge with devices. At 45 percent, Singaporeans felt
this challenge the most followed by 42 percent of Malaysians.  

o    Issues with different interface experiences
across devices (34 percent) and apps not syncing up perfectly across devices
(32 percent) were the other two issues causing difficulties for the region.

·         Unsafe password practices could make
businesses a haven for attacks as 33 percent use the same password across
multiple devices and 29 percent save passwords as notes on their mobile device

o    At least 37 percent of Thais and 31 percent of
Singaporeans prefer to use the same password across devices. The trend is
mirrored in Malaysia (29 percent) and Indonesia (25 percent).

o   Indonesians (32 percent) topped the list of
respondents who use mobile devices to store passwords. This was followed by
Malaysians (29 percent).

“In the digital era, employees, devices, applications and data
increasingly live beyond the physical walls of the workplace. As the benefits
of digitization extend across the organization to include a broader set of
employees and endpoints, there is an urgent need to balance consumer
preferences with enterprise security. The gaps, vulnerabilities and
inefficiencies unveiled by the VMware Digital Workspace Survey findings establish
the need to plug the gaps that could significantly hinder ASEAN’s
competitiveness and growth,” said Ron Goh, President, Southeast Asia &
Korea, VMware.

To address IT departments’ cyber security
concerns and users’ difficulties accessing critical business information and
processes on work applications, VMware has introduced access management and
security capabilities for its VMware Workspace ONE™ solution. Building on
previous Workspace ONE innovations, VMware will make it easy for IT to deliver
unified access and a single sign-on experience to intranet applications and
offer richer access capabilities that combine real-time security hygiene with
compliance automation. Workspace ONE combines identity and enterprise mobility
management (EMM) to help organizations securely deploy all business
applications and services with an improved end-user experience.