In my daily headline scanning, which includes email newsletters from places like the NYTimes, mediabistro.com, Mobile Commerce Daily, ROI Report, Mashable, and oh, about a dozen others I’m surely forgetting, one caught my eye. It was on Mashable and read:

Using Your Smartphone for Work? You’re Taking a Big Risk

Gulp.

Apparently new research has found that 84% of employees use the same smartphone for work and pleasure, but only 53% said they had a pass code protecting that phone, and 49% of respondents said their information technology department had NOT discussed mobile or cybersecurity with them.

Sure, we all know of the risks inherent with the inter-webs. Our data’s all out there, hanging around for who knows who to grab if they so choose. But perhaps we aren’t so scared because we think of it as OURS. What if the data that’s hacked or compromised belongs to our company?

I don’t know about you guys but that is perhaps just as anxiety producing if not more so…to think that you could be responsible for a security breach or some sort of terrible tragedy at your company – how horrendous!

The research revealed that the same number of respondents, 49%, said their company had a security policy in place, but more than one-quarter of workers said they were unsure if their company had a policy in place. Also, six in 10 workers said they still write passwords down on a piece of paper while 36% of workers said they reuse the same password for different accounts.

(I literally, at this moment, grab a piece of paper off of my pin-board with not one or two, but EIGHT passwords scribbled on it; to accounts like my bank, Twitter, student loans…WHAT WAS I THINKING?! <whole body now physically cringing at my ignorance> Said paper is no longer available for public viewing but shame, embarrassment and sudden onset of paranoid account-double-and-triple-checking is palpable.)

The information was compiled based on responses from 400 individuals not working in IT. The research was conducted by Coalfire, an IT governance and risk and compliance services company.

Bottom line – get educated about cybersecurity. Especially if you’re using your phone for work AND personal matters. If your company hasn’t offered any such education yet encourages you to BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), ask them for the training. They’ll thank you for it later.