Nearly 70 percent of companies are concerned about employees using third-party messaging and chat apps to communicate and send documents internally, according to a survey of 397 IT enterprise decision-makers by messaging and mobility specialist Infinite Convergence.

The study also found that 59 percent of IT decision-makers think third-party messaging apps and chat tools are insecure for enterprise communication, and 41 percent of companies ban the use of one or more third-party chat apps. Additionally, while 84 percent indicate that internal enterprise messaging systems are a more secure option, less than half currently use an internal messaging service.

When it comes to bring your own device (BYOD) policies, 41 percent of survey respondents indicated that more than half of their employees use personal devices for internal messaging and to access company information. "With BYOD, enterprises have to deal with a whole new realm of IT concerns that they did not previously face: the consumer's own device and the information exchanged on it," Anurag Lal, CEO at Infinite Convergence, told eWeek. "Enterprise IT teams didn’t have to contemplate that before BYOD was an option.

Not only do they have to deal with consumers' devices, but also the applications on their devices and the ability of those applications to transfer enterprise information or content." Lal explained that with the advent of BYOD and over-the-top applications, enterprises are finding it more difficult than ever to control employee messaging.

According to the survey, two out of three executives said they are concerned about employees using their personal devices to communicate and send business-related documents and information, and more than half are concerned about former employees still having access to company information on their personal devices after they leave.

The study found that at least a quarter of companies ban some of the most popular apps and chat tools for internal communication, including Google Chat (30 percent), WhatsApp (29 percent), weChat (27 percent), Skype (26 percent) and iMessage (26 percent).

Email is considered the most secure way to communicate enterprise information, according to the IT executives surveyed, with 89 percent considering it a secure medium. The study also found that only a third of companies mandate that internal communications outside of email go through a corporate-controlled messaging system.

More than three quarters (77 percent) of enterprise IT executives indicate a highly secure, simple and intuitive internal messaging service would be valuable compared to their current enterprise communication system. Of the respondents who said they currently have a regulated internal messaging system in place for employees, more than half said they cannot remotely wipe information sent through that system from an employee’s device. "Enterprises need to train their end users to exercise a level of responsibility when transferring enterprise information.

Employees need to be aware that their consumer apps are not secure and only use enterprise approved or mandated apps for internal communications," Lal said. "In today’s environment, where enterprise information is breached constantly, this is the only way companies can have control over how information is exchanged within the enterprise."

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As the rate of stolen mobile devices has increased, the average time for IT departments to respond to this security threat has also grown, according to a Kaspersky Lab survey of global IT security professionals.

The report found that more than one-third of employees (38 percent) take up to two days to notify their employers of stolen mobile devices, and 9 percent of employees wait three to five days. The percentage of employees who notified their employers the same day the incident occurred decreased from 60 percent to 50 percent from 2013 to 2014.

The cause of this delay is employees becoming slower to notify their employers of missing devices, with only half of employees reporting theft quickly. "I suspect there is some embarrassment and or fear of reporting a lost, or perhaps stolen device," Mark Bermingham, director of global B2B product marketing for Kaspersky Lab, told eWeek. "Employees will often spend time, which ends up being critical time searching for and hoping to recover the device before giving up and reporting to your organization."

Across businesses that experienced mobile device theft, 19 percent said the device theft resulted in the loss of business data, meaning businesses have approximately a one-in-five chance of losing data if a corporate mobile device is stolen.

The survey also found that the rate of mobile device theft overall has continued to climb over the years, with 25 percent of companies experiencing the theft of a mobile device in 2014, a significant increase from the 14 percent reported in 2011. However, as stolen devices become more common, employees appear to be responding more slowly, with only half of employees in 2014 reported a stolen device on the same day the incident occurred.

The growing prevalence of stolen mobile devices may be a contributing factor to employee apathy, since a stolen smartphone might now be seen as a somewhat common occurrence, and not a rare crisis that demands attention. "I’d hope the trend would improve, but to accomplish this more training and expectation setting needs to occur between organizations and employees when dispensing and or activating BYOD mobiles," Bermingham said. "Some of this training needs to focus on the importance of speed in reporting a misplaced device, which may actually be lost or stolen." He noted that often, with the right administrative tools in place, like remote lock and find and misplaced device can more easily be retrieved. "

Additionally, in the event of loss remote wipe becomes critical and in this case the sooner the better," he said. "Enforcing policies like required passwords can also help to bolster security for events where devices are lost or stolen by making it more difficult for data and or sensitive business information to be extracted from these devices."

When looking at behaviors of employees in specific regions, North American employees are the slowest to respond based on 2014 survey data, with only 43 percent of North American employees reporting a stolen device on the same day as the incident.

The Asia-Pacific region saw the biggest change year-over-year with only 47 percent of employees reporting same-day notification in 2014, a drop from 74 percent in 2013.

However, the rate of mobile device theft varied significantly across regions. The Middle East reported the lowest rate of mobile device theft by far, with 8 percent of businesses reporting an incident, followed by 15 percent in Japan and Russia.

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