Personal Mobile devices at work: factors affecting the adoption of security mechanisms

This research examines the use of personal mobile devices at work and what factors affect people’s adoption of enhanced levels of security mechanisms for their devices. Mobile devices make the delineation between work and personal life less clear or even non-existent. Mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets and in the foreseeable future together with smartwatches and smart glasses, will be inseparable to people, whether they be at work or outside. Alongside with their devices being brought into work environments, they will be used to carry out activities that are work related and very likely to host company-sensitive information within them. The mobile nature of the devices means they frequently operate in insecure environments, providing numerous opportunities for attackers to obtain critical information and use it for unwanted purposes. This can pose a dilemma for companies given that, on the one hand, they cannot stop their employees from using their personal devices for work-related activities and storing company-sensitive data and, on the other, attacks to steal data from devices are constantly growing in terms of sophistication, frequently, and effectiveness. In this research, we want to understand better the usage patterns of people bringing their devices to work and their predisposition to adopt secure mechanisms to protect the data found in their devices. We aim to find what factors impact the adoption of these mechanisms. The results indicate there are a number of factors that can predict their adoption, which are useful for designers of interfaces with security in mind and companies who would like to see their employees adopt more sophisticated and better methods to secure data located in these devices.