Mobile Devices: A Singular Threat to Corporate Compliance and E-Discovery

The proliferation of an ever-expanding array of mobile devices promises greater employee productivity while introducing greater risk for corporate compliance and e-discovery efforts. Is your enterprise up to the task?

It’s no secret that corporate compliance programs continue to evolve as the corporate infrastructure, once tethered and isolated by wire, continues to change. The IT framework of yesterday’s enterprise bears little resemblance to the typical modern corporation – one which increasingly reflects our insatiable desire to stay connected.

Mobile device use continues to grow exponentially, accelerated by the corresponding explosion in social media, the nearly instantaneous news cycle made possible by the Internet, and mobile entertainment. Many experts predict that smartphone use alone will double in the next few years and data sharing will likewise increase at a comparable rate. Cisco predicts that mobile data traffic will double each year until 2014 – a reflection not only of increased consumer use of mobile devices, but also the significant increase in the use of mobile enterprise applications.

With so much information being accessed and shared via smartphones, iPads, PDAs, notebooks, laptops and other devices, the potential impact on enterprises and compliance initiatives is great. A recent survey by Ovum, titled, “Corporate mobile device use and security,” found that seventy percent of respondents reported using corporate devices for personal activities and nearly 50 percent said they use personal mobile devices to access company networks and business applications.

Further evidence of the blurring of the line that once shielded corporate networks from employees’ personal devices and activities can be seen in research from Forrester – a synopsis of which can be read at SearchMobileComputing.com. Forrester’s recent survey of 432 workers found that 42 percent use their personal smartphones to search the Internet or corporate intranet for work-related information, and 48 percent check corporate e-mail.

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Source: Corporate Compliance Insights
By: Jeffery C. Fehrman