In the not-so-distant past, company information, files and data were confined to the four walls of the organization. After 5 p.m., and on weekends and holidays, this information was largely inaccessible to the average employee. Now, the availability of company data is seen in an entirely different light, with employees accessing files from three or four different devices any day of the week.

“Turning a blind eye” is an age old idiom that describes the act of ignoring undesirable information. And, according to our 2013 Data Protection Trends Research, it seems to be the attitude many IT professionals have taken towards the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) movement.

It’s basically a given that, today, employees are going to bring their own mobile devices to the office and use them for work. But, right now, a lot of companies are struggling with these bring-your-own-device (BYOD) habits. Our 2013 Data Protection Trends Research, which surveyed more than 4,300 IT professionals around the world, found that nearly 60 percent of companies don’t have BYOD policies in place. This can certainly present security issues and risks for data leakage, but BYOD trends also encourage something else: bring-your-own-cloud (BYOC).

Allowing employees to use their personal mobile devices for work can provide a multitude of advantages: productivity, simpler connectivity, access to the resources they need from virtually anywhere. But along with the benefits, bring your own device (BYOD) opens the door to risks, including security vulnerabilities, data leakage, compliance and potential liability issues.The magnitude of the problem is big, considering millions of these devices are lost, stolen or misplaced every year (120 thousand phones were lost in Chicago taxi cabs alone last year…).