Angry Birds broadly banned by Aussie IT bods

Angry Birds and Clash of Clans are among the apps most often banned by Australian businesses, according to data from enterprise mobility management firm, MobileIron.

Despite the huge recent success of Pokemon Go, the game didn’t feature in the top ten most blacklisted apps list, which mainly features communications and cloud storage platforms.

The ten most commonly black-listed were: Angry Birds, Facebook, Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, Twitter, WhatsApp, Skype, Viber and Clash of Clans.

IT departments are struggling to secure their businesses in an era of increased mobility, said MobileIron CEO Barry Mainz, with many apps presenting malware risks or vectors for corporate data loss.

“When an unmanaged app that can potentially access corporate data or bypass corporate security measures achieves broad consumer adoption, IT departments look to blacklist it because they can’t protect corporate data in an app they don’t manage,” he said.

MobileIron allows enterprises to provide employees with a curated list of IT-approved business apps via an enterprise app storefront. If an employee downloads a blacklisted app, IT departments can set policies to automatically quarantine the device, remove access to the enterprise network, or even wipe business data and email from the device.

Slack security

The vendor’s data also found that only seven per cent of Australian companies enforced OS updates and fewer than five per cent used app reputation or mobile threat detection software, a fact Mainz called ‘alarmingly complacent’.

“The velocity of mobile attacks is increasing but the latest data shows that enterprises are still not doing the things they could be to protect themselves,” he added.

Some 64 per cent of Australian companies were also found to have at least one device out of compliance, compared to around half of companies worldwide. However, Mainz added that this was mainly due to Australian businesses having slightly more stringent compliance measures than their global counterparts.