AirTight Survey of IT Professionals Reveals Security Concerns around BYOD Trend; Key Findings Revealed at Infosecurity Europe

LONDON, April 24, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- At the opening of Infosecurity Europe 2012, AirTight® Networks, the global leader for wireless intrusion prevention systems (WIPS) and secure Wi-Fi solutions, issued the results of its survey, conducted among 316 IT and security professionals tasked with understanding emerging trends and threats to the security of their networks.  The survey, titled "What is your approach to BYOD – Love it? Hate it?" set out to assess the opinions of IT and network security professionals about how pervasive the BYOD trend is in the enterprise, attitudes toward employees bringing their own devices and the management and security concerns around that trend.

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One of the interesting dichotomies of this initial survey was that fully 61 percent of respondents said they viewed the BYOD trend as both an opportunity to reduce IT costs and increase efficiency but also a threat to enterprise security. When asked how pervasive respondents thought the use of personal smart devices is in the enterprise generally, more than 86 percent said very pervasive or somewhat pervasive. Only 11 percent said they did not allow personal devices. The full results of AirTight's survey can be found at this link. These findings are consistent with a survey by Avanade, a business technology solutions and managed services provider, published earlier this year in eWeek.  That found 60 percent of companies are adapting their IT infrastructure to accommodate employees' personal devices instead of restricting how employees can use them.

"From the responses AirTight got, it appears most organizations are realizing that they are fighting a losing battle by trying to restrict employees from bringing and using personal devices," said Pravin Bhagwat, CTO at AirTight. iPhones, iPads, Androids, Tablets are pouring into organizations. In today's BYOD culture, AirTight often sees 3 times as many unmanaged personal devices in a customer's airspace than corporate devices. The key to keeping your network secure is to manage those devices."

The level of difficulty in managing the devices arises because authorized users need only their enterprise login credentials to connect their unapproved personal devices to even a WPA2/802.1x secured network without the knowledge or permission of the administrator, exposing the network to security threats, malware, and data leakage.   

"It is important for the enterprise to get ahead of this increasingly common threat of unmanaged devices connecting to corporate networks and understand the benefits and capabilities of different technologies such as WIPS, NAC and MDM to control both the use of personal devices and the threats they bring," continued Bhagwat.

Bhagwat will also be speaking in the Technical Theater at Infosecurity Europe. His presentation titled, "Lessons learned from implementing corporate-wide wireless security policy," takes place on April 25 at 15:20 and will discuss how large distributed enterprises have effectively tackled this challenge to empower their mobile workforces with wireless access which is secure both on their enterprise premises and while on the road.

If you would like to speak to an AirTight expert on the challenge of BYOD in the enterprise and best practices for managing the threats, please contact Della Lowe at 650-934-8191 or [email protected].

About AirTight's BYOD solution

AirTight Networks' SpectraGuard Wireless Intrusion Prevention System (WIPS) offers the most complete solution to help you definitively manage BYOD. The highlights of this solution are:

• A unique workflow (patent pending) to simplify BYOD management
• 24/7 monitoring of enterprise airspace and network
• Automatic fingerprinting of smartphones and tablets: iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, Android, etc.
• Using patented Marker Packet techniques, automatically and accurately detects all types of Rogue APs including Soft Rogues, and Mobile Wi-Fi Hotspots
• Real-time quarantine of unapproved smartphones and tablets, all types of Rogues and unauthorized Mobile Wi-Fi Hotspots
• Automatically pinpoints physical location of any Wi-Fi device on premises
• Delivers BYOD report to your inbox (View Sample Report)
• BYOD management API that can integrate with any MDM solution

AirTight Networks also offers a BYOD-secure Wi-Fi Solution. Powered with SpectraGuard WIPS technology, AirTight Secure Wi-Fi provides network access to only approved devices and blocks unapproved smart devices and Rogue APs trying to gain access to the enterprise network.

Without the right solution, IT security managers don't have visibility into BYOD and are unable to control the risks from personal Wi-Fi devices. WPA2/802.1x cannot stop them. MDM alone cannot manage BYOD because the personal devices don't have an MDM software agent and users don't have an incentive to install one. NAC solutions, including those integrated into the Wi-Fi infrastructure, can control access only for devices connecting via the enterprise or guest Wi-Fi networks. However, users are finding other ways -- Rogue APs, Soft Rogues, Mobile Hotspots -- to gain access to what they want, when they want.

Download AirTight BYOD Solution Brief

About AirTight Networks

AirTight Networks is the global leader in wireless security and compliance solutions. AirTight's patented technology protects enterprises from the growing problem of Wi-Fi security threats, while allowing organizations to better manage their WLAN environment and comply with emerging wireless compliance standards (i.e. PCI). The Company's award-winning SpectraGuard wireless intrusion prevention solution (WIPS) family provides enterprise security and compliance professionals with unparalleled capabilities to accurately detect, classify, block and locate all Wi-Fi security threats, while helping network operations staff to quickly monitor and troubleshoot WLAN performance issues. AirTight's pioneering Cloud Services family of cloud-hosted subscription services delivers the world's first and only "No Capex" multi-tenant WIPS, PCI wireless compliance and controller-less WLAN access solutions all in a single device. 

AirTight's award-winning solutions are used by customers globally in the government, financial, retail, hospitality, telecom, technology, manufacturing, transportation, healthcare and education sectors. AirTight owns the seminal patents for wireless intrusion prevention technology with 24 U.S. and international patents granted to date (UK, Australia Japan) and more than 20 additional patents pending. AirTight Networks is a privately held company based in Mountain View, CA.

AirTight is a registered trademark of AirTight Networks, Inc.  AirTight Networks, the AirTight Networks logo, Airtight Cloud Services and AirTight Secure Wi-Fi are trademarks. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE AirTight Networks