Lack of security puts retailers at risk of PDA theft

The Mobile Vulnerability Survey 2004 has highlighted the lack of security guidelines in place when retailers issue mobile devices to staff.

Retailers are increasingly introducing mobile devices such as hand-held computers in the warehouse, on the shopfloor and to executives in the field.

The survey, commissioned by Pointsec Mobile Technologies, Infosecurity Europe and Computer Business Review (CBR), covered retailers and other companies. It found that an increasing amount of company data is being stored on personal digital assistants (PDAs). However, two thirds of PDAs have no encryption and one third have no password.

About half of the companies surveyed did not report theft of PDAs to the police.

- Case study: page 21.