Unmanaged wearables to pose IT security in enterprises

69 percent of wearable device owners say they forego login credentials, such as PINs, passwords, fingerprint scanners and voice recognition, to access their devices. 56 percent of wearable owners use their devices to access business apps such as Box, Slack, Trello, Dropbox, Salesforce, Google Docs, Microsoft Office or a combination of those.

Despite the lack of login credentials and ready access to corporate data, 42 percent of wearable owners cite identity theft as their top security concern when it comes to their devices. Lack of IT management and device control comes in second (34 percent) and a general increase in breaches of sensitive work data or information comes in third (22 percent).

“As wearables become more common in the enterprise, IT departments must take serious steps to protect them as carefully as they do laptops and smartphones,” said Bill Mann, Chief Product Officer for Centrify. “Wearables are deceptively private. Owners may feel that due to their ongoing proximity to the body, they’re less likely to fall into the wrong hands. However, hackers don’t need to take physical possession of a device in order to exploit a hole in security. The best news is that solutions already exist that can easily wrap wearables into the identity management picture.”

Solutions like the Centrify Identity Platform (which itself leverages a variety of authentication factors including mobile biometrics) come in. It’s designed to offer multi-factor authentication through a wide range of enterprise apps, operating systems, and devices, helping to protect against the kind of breaches that unsecured wearables could enable. And as more organizations see the advantages in adopting BYOD culture, such solutions could become increasingly important.

For this survey, Centrify polled more than 100 randomly-chosen RSA attendees. For more information, please visit Centrify at RSA South Hall Booth #S2027 or at www.centrify.com.