Will the consumer IT revolution sweep away corporate data privacy?

The implications of recent Gartner predictions are clear; consumer-IT technology is loosening business's grip on workforce practices and sensitive data.

By 2012, 73 per cent of the enterprise workforce will be mobile, and 20 per cent of companies will no longer own any IT assets.

By 2013, 80 per cent of businesses will support a workforce using tablets, and by 2014 almost all businesses will supply corporate data through smart-phone apps, as sensitive data migrates beyond office walls to the remote realms of virtual reality and cloud services.

This conjures up visions of corporate informational chaos, endless mobile endpoints handling sensitive data, remote boards thrashing out mergers in virtual meetings and vital data flowing across public networks.

With 372 million mobile devices sold worldwide this year, mobile data storage is replacing PCs, with potentially disastrous consequences.

The average data breach costs UK organisations £1.9 million. With the FSA flexing its punitive muscle and the ICO armed with the power to impose £500,000 fines on negligent organisations, data security is becoming a legal imperative.

In a services economy where reputation is the biggest asset, and a 24/7 media culture where mainstream news converges with social media, the instantaneous effect of data breaches on reputation concerns big business. And for an estimated 80 per cent of SMEs, data breaches lead to bankruptcy.

Yet of 160,000 laptops lost in 2010, just 34 per cent were encrypted, and 26 per cent were regularly backed up.

Consumer IT has dangerous implications because it is geared towards data consumption rather than creation, and user empowerment rather than data privacy.

Personalised IT is spawning a worker who expects to work remotely or on-site, share corporate information over public networks, choose his own IT technology, and bring app stores and social media into the workspace.

Yet advances in encryption and cloud technology mean there are multiple solutions, from remote deletion and backup to local encryption and remote encryption, but businesses are failing to integrate them.

As data breach becomes a hot-button media issue, endpoints multiply and the cost of data-breaches rises, the market in endpoint data security is set to explode.

Phil Evans is EMEA VP at Datacastle