As American employees succumb to the frenzy of NCAA Basketball March Madness — the growing roster of mobile apps feeding their obsession could pose a security risk to organizations if used on employer-issued devices or employee-owned, BYOD devices capable of accessing corporate data.
That’s the opening salvo from a new report from Application Readiness expert, Flexera Software, which notes that many of the apps popularly used by employees to do everything from create brackets to follow their favorite NCAA teams — could exhibit behaviors that violate corporate risk policies.
“Many of employees’ favorite March Madness apps are able to do things like access their device’s calendars, contact lists, address books, and social media accounts such as Facebook and Twitter. Some can also track employees’ locations or access the device’s texting capabilities,” said Maureen Polte, Vice President of Product Management at Flexera Software. “Before CIOs can evaluate potential risk — they must first understand what these apps do, the data they can interact with and the device functions they can activate.”
“These app behaviors and functions may or may not be risky for particular organizations — depending on their definitions of risk. What may be considered safe for a manufacturing company may be risky for a financial institution,” added Polte. “So, it’s critical for CIO’s to avoid potential risk and embarrassment by establishing their own BYOD risk profiles and policies, and then testing the apps used on BYOD devices to understand which ones violate those policies.”
Want to know more? Download the report now.
